


Seeing Angels in the Architecture

by ftmsteverogers



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Endgame Fix-It, F/M, Fix-It, Happy Ending, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Jewish Sam Wilson, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-04-06 10:55:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 35,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19061206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ftmsteverogers/pseuds/ftmsteverogers
Summary: Steve goes back to 1945, saves Bucky from HYDRA, and builds a life with him and Peggy. It's supposed to be everything he wanted.In 2024, Sam and Bucky do their mourning, leaning on each other, and begin trying to face a world without Steve in it. Until a different Steve Rogers materializes in the middle of New York, very confused, having just crashed the Valkyrie.





	1. Far Away, My Well-Lit Door

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to SK, as always, for untangling my convoluted plots.
> 
> I made a playlist for this story that you can listen to [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/rogerswilsonbarnes/playlist/7i0Ch0ajSTyfXDNrYBJRyh?si=wnt4wGkHQIKeAkVh3GelBQ) on spotify!

**PROLOGUE**

_1945_

 

* * *

 

Half-melted ice sloughs off his body, a hand cupped to the back of his neck, not allowing his head to loll too far backward. The hand’s grip is firm. Familiar. Grey-blue eyes blink open, ice crystals making his eyelashes heavy, his breath harsh, coming in ragged.

“That’s it,” a soft voice says, squeezing the back of his neck. “That’s it, nice and easy. You’re alright.”

Is he alright? He whimpers when he tries to speak, and is hushed by a thumb pressed to the bow of his lips. Now that the ringing in his ears has subsided to the dull throb of blood beginning to move again, he can hear a commotion in the hallway, raised voices, thuds as punches land.

He blinks, and a face swims into view. He knows that face. His eyes widen.

“Heya,” Steve says gently, a smile breaking over him like sunlight cutting through cloud cover. “Hey, Buck, there you are. Can you stand?”

Bucky shakes his head woodenly. He can barely breathe, his limbs are weak and wracked with pins and needles. This is more pleasant than any time he’s been unfrozen so far, though, because Steve is here, and Steve is touching him. His hands are burning hot.

“I knew you’d come,” Bucky rasps. “I knew you were comin’ for me.”

For some reason, this makes Steve get a horrible look on his face, like he’s been kicked in the stomach. But all he does is smile sickly at Bucky and touch his face again, petting his hair back from his forehead. “Always do,” he says, though it wavers a little, and bends down to slide an arm around Bucky’s shoulders. “Hang on.”

He hefts Bucky up into his arms, and Bucky lets his head rest on Steve’s shoulder, eyes drooping closed once more. His left arm stump is neatly bandaged, giving a threatening throb as they move, and he cradles it to his chest with his other arm hanging down limp. Steve carries him to the door, hollers, “Cover me!”

Dum Dum Dugan’s voice hollers back, “Go, we’ve got you!”

Bucky presses his face into the crook of Steve’s neck and tries not to listen to the rattle of gunfire. He pants against Steve’s throat. Steve holds him tightly and runs, feet hitting the ground hard, and Bucky tries not to groan as his arm is jostled. Steve smells like himself, like the cologne Bucky bought him for his birthday, and the relief he feels at this discovery makes his eyes sting. It’s like being rescued after Azzano all over again.

Bucky thinks, numbly, that his nightmares won’t even have to change much, going forward.

There’s a car waiting for them outside, with Peggy Carter at the wheel. Her jaw is set and her eyes are very sad, and Bucky thinks – _no, God, how awful do I look to make her look like that?_

“Get in the backseat,” Peggy orders, and Steve hastens to obey, getting the rear door open and manhandling Bucky inside as gently as he can manage. Bucky’s face screws up, head swimming from being moved around so much directly after coming out of cryostasis. He’s breathing hard by the time Steve scrambles into the car and puts Bucky’s head in his lap.

“We’re good, Peg,” he says, frantic.

Peggy shakes her head and stomps on the gas pedal. The car lurches to life and careens down the road, away from the base, toward whatever safety Steve has waiting for them. “Was Dugan far behind you?” she demands.

“No, they’re all rushing for their car too,” Steve answers quickly. “Morita got clipped, but the others are fine.” He buries a hand in Bucky’s sweat-damp hair and Bucky breathes shallowly, clammy and pale, looking up at Steve through glazed-over eyes. There’s something deeply off about him, but he can’t tell what it is.

He decides he doesn’t care about it and closes his eyes. Turns his face, pressing it into the crease of Steve’s hip. “What took you so long, huh?” he mumbles.

Steve makes a choked sound and doesn’t say anything for a long while. When he does, it’s just a quiet, “You’re safe now, I got you,” and a hand cupped over the side of Bucky’s jaw that does not move.


	2. I Don't Find This Stuff Amusing Anymore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m sorry our best friend’s a dick,” Bucky tells him, voice muffled by Sam’s shoulder.
> 
> Sam makes a sound halfway between a laugh and a bark. “Who knew he’d beat you out for the jerk-of-the-century prize?”
> 
> “And I tore the steering wheel right out of your car,” Bucky says. “I shoulda had it in the bag.”

**CHAPTER ONE**

_2024_

 

* * *

 

“He’s really gone, huh,” Sam says.

Bucky takes a long pull from his beer bottle and says nothing, which is an agreement. It’s been eight hours since Steve disappeared from the time travel pad, eight hours since Bucky’s heart sank as he realized Steve had been serious about disappearing for good, eight hours since Bucky had to sit Sam down and explain to him why his best friend wasn’t reappearing like he said he would.

“Guess he got what he always wanted,” Bucky replies, and drains his bottle. He grabs another, flicking the cap off with his metal thumb. “I think I’m supposed to be happy for him.”

Sam looks at him. “But?”

Bucky shoots Sam a very tight smile. “His ideal future didn’t have me in it.”

Sam makes a sympathetic noise. The two of them are on their second six-pack, Bucky doing most of the heavy lifting in their drinking, and they sit on Sam’s couch with their uniforms half undone and hanging off of them. Bucky’s jacket is draped over the coffee table. One boot kicked off, the other unlaced.

“I really thought you two were gonna...” Sam waves a hand. “Y’know.”

Bucky’s laugh is very hollow. “Yeah,” he says, and takes another swig. “Kinda thought the same about him ‘n you.”

Sam looks down at the floor, at his shoes, and Bucky realizes that for all this is bad for him, at least Steve gave him a warning. Sam had no idea that Steve wouldn’t materialize in the five minutes promised, he’d been blindsided, gutshot. Bucky puts his arm around Sam’s shoulders and hauls him in, hugs him close. His beer sloshes a little and threatens to spill, but Sam hugs him back, and that’s alright. That’s just fine.

“Put that down, Barnes, who taught you to hug?” Sam says, taking Bucky’s bottle and putting it on the coffee table with his own. Bucky thinks for a second that that’ll be the end of it, but Sam grabs his metal hand and pulls until Bucky’s holding him again, so he goes willingly. Puts his flesh hand on the nape of Sam’s neck, squeezing gently.

“I’m sorry our best friend’s a dick,” he tells him, voice muffled by Sam’s shoulder.

Sam makes a sound halfway between a laugh and a bark. “Who knew he’d beat you out for the jerk-of-the-century prize?”

“And I tore the steering wheel right out of your car,” Bucky says. “I shoulda had it in the bag.”

Sam laughs, genuinely. It’s a nice sound. Warmer than Bucky’s heard in a while. He leans back, hand still on Sam’s neck, and looks at him, meeting his red-rimmed eyes. Then he kisses him.

Sam, to his credit, doesn’t waste any time kissing back. They’re both drunk and sad and it feels good to kiss, to clutch at each other – Bucky hasn’t kissed anyone since 1943, and that was eighty years ago, so he’s due. Sam’s lips are very soft and he kisses like anybody else who’s had the worst day of their life, and Bucky’s had a few of those, he knows what they look like, all open-mouthed and desperate.

“You only doing this ‘cause you miss him?” Sam asks between kisses, although he gives no indication that he plans to stop or even slow down.

Bucky sets teeth against Sam’s full lower lip. “I’m not _that_ much of an asshole.”

They kiss for a while longer. At some point, Bucky ends up sprawled half across Sam’s lap, one of Sam’s hands buried in his hair, and thinks – well, if he was going to come back from the dead again for something. This isn’t so bad.

“It’s kinda hard –” Sam pulls a little on his fistful of Bucky’s hair, which makes Bucky’s breath catch. “– To follow an act like Captain America.”

“Hell, Sam.” Bucky touches Sam’s cheek, his jaw, his chest. “You’ve tossed the shield around once or twice.”

Sam looks tired and raw and grateful, too. “So have you.”

Bucky has to look away, jaw working, and waits until Sam nudges his chin with his lips. Then he turns back to him and gives him his full attention, cradling that beautiful face between his hands, wondering how on earth they’re meant to live through this.

“If you start crying, we’re done making out,” Sam warns him, and Bucky laughs, shoulders shaking with it, burying his face in the crook of Sam’s neck while Sam’s arms come up to wrap around him. When Bucky’s laughter turns into awful, wracking sobs, Sam doesn’t stop holding him, but he does murmur a soft, “Jeez, Barnes,” that comes out extraordinarily tender as he rubs up and down Bucky’s back.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky gasps wetly. “He’s your best friend too, I’m not trying to – I don’t –”

“Bucky. God.” Sam cups his cheek with a warm palm. “You’re also my best friend, dumbass.”

Bucky’s lower lip honest to God quivers, and that’s when Sam goes back on his previous threat and kisses him hard, over and over until Bucky forgets about everything except for their two bodies.

 

* * *

 

It takes Bucky a week and a half to find a new apartment. Now that everyone’s back from the snap, infrastructure has begun to knit itself back together, and Bucky wonders absently if he’s still a wanted man. If he is, it doesn’t prevent him from signing the lease, so he doesn’t pay it much mind.

He moves in what little stuff he has, then drags Sam to IKEA for a couch, a bookshelf, a bed frame. Sam makes one joke about Natasha mispronouncing Swedish words on purpose before they both sober up too hard and have to go stress-eat vanilla soft serve until they can continue.

They lug it all back to Bucky’s new place and spend the afternoon yelling at each other while they set it up. It isn’t the angry kind of yelling, not really, but the instructions are confusing and everything threatens to snap under Bucky’s metal grip, which is annoying. Sam’s real handy, though. Bucky spends some time watching Sam’s arms work while he screws bookshelves to the frame, and then he has to come up behind him and kiss the back of his neck, scraping teeth very gently where his throat meets his jaw. Waiting until Sam’s shivering to tell him, “Come test out my new bed frame with me,” directly into his ear.

“You aren’t smooth,” Sam says.

“Yeah, I am,” Bucky says. “C’mon.”

He drags Sam down the hall, flashing him a grin that shows teeth, and Sam’s expression softens as he follows him. If Bucky stops smiling for a second, this will stop being good, and the mourning will fill his throat until he chokes on it. So he doesn't stop. He smiles, touching Sam, watching Sam's amused fondness melt into something sweeter. There’s heat there too, and Bucky knew there would be, but it feels good to be right. Feels better when Sam pushes two hands up the back of Bucky’s shirt at once, dragging blunt fingernails, and Bucky gasps directly into his mouth when Sam kneads a sore muscle around his left shoulder socket with one hand.

“You’re one big ball of tension, huh,” Sam murmurs, and does it again. Bucky drops his forehead to Sam’s shoulder, nods. “Do you want a massage or do you want to fool around?”

“We can’t do both?” Bucky asks, and Sam huffs a laugh, tugging his shirt up.

“Greedy,” he comments, but it comes out fond, and Bucky just shucks off his shirt and makes Sam take his off too.

Bucky’s got lotion – somewhere – and Sam promises to do something fantastic to him with coconut oil at some point, but in the meantime, what Bucky has makes do. They get on the bed, Bucky on his stomach and Sam perched on the backs of his thighs. Sam starts out slow, sweeping his hands in broad gestures across Bucky’s shoulders, but he stops playing nice pretty fast and presses his thumbs into every part that’s too tight.

Bucky makes obscene sounds. He’s shameless, squirming, pressing up into Sam’s hands, because – Sam is – very good at this, and Bucky never knew, or he would’ve jerked off thinking about it, probably. Sweet bursts of tension make Bucky slump bonelessly onto the mattress, body loose and pliant, mouth open against his pillow.

“Jesus, Barnes, your mouth,” Sam murmurs after a while of this, dragging the heel of his hand down Bucky’s spine. “You sound like this every time someone puts his hands on you?”

“Maybe you’re special,” Bucky suggests, breathless.

Sam snorts. “You’d get kicked out of a professional massage, I’ll tell you that right now.”

“Oh, am I not supposed to be getting off on this?” Bucky asks, very innocent, which makes Sam laugh and bite the back of his neck.

Eventually rubbing his lower back turns into Sam fingering him, which Bucky kind of saw coming, and is glad he put lube and lotion in the same bedside drawer. Sam’s fingers are thick and careful and Bucky breathes hard into his bent arm, arches his back, bends his knees to press up and give Sam a better angle.

“Y’know, if someone told me at the beginning I’d end up screwing the Winter Soldier, I’d have probably laughed in their face,” Sam muses, two fingers in now, twisting them thoroughly.

Bucky makes a wrecked sound and squirms some more. “Right now you’re just sexually frustrating the Winter Soldier, so if you’d get on with it –”

“Greedy,” Sam says again, but this time it’s very approving.

Bucky flips over onto his back while Sam gets a condom, and wraps his legs helpfully around Sam’s waist to speed things along.

“You’re the world’s most perverted octopus right now, Buck, I swear to God,” Sam says, and Bucky would retort, but he’s too busy being punched in the stomach by Sam calling him _Buck_ to reply. Sam seems to catch that something’s up, so he rubs Bucky’s thigh, bends down to kiss his knee.

“C’mon,” Bucky murmurs.

Sam obliges.

He sinks in real slow, leaning forward to put his elbows on either side of Bucky’s head while he does it. Bucky was already kind of inhumanly flexible and now he’s loose from the massage – he doesn’t mind getting bent nearly in half, throwing a leg over one of Sam’s shoulders to make the angle deeper the next time Sam thrusts in. Sam kisses him sweetly while he fucks him. Winds fingers in Bucky’s hair. Calls him by a number of endearments that Bucky will tease him about afterward, but in the moment, it just makes him moan and reach down to fist his own cock. Sam makes an encouraging sound and sucks just beneath Bucky’s jaw.

“That’s it, baby, look at you,” Sam pants, thrusting a little faster now, really getting into it. Bucky’s breath hitches every time his hips hit his ass, every gut-deep jolt of pleasure taking him by surprise even when he’s expecting it. “You love this, don’t you?”

Bucky switches to touching himself with the metal hand, which makes Sam groan low in the back of his throat while he watches. Bucky can’t remember the last time he’s felt this full up – he’s been empty since he fell off that damn train, hollow to the point of echoing, and now Sam is filling him again and again. Deep enough to ache.

He cries out, body tensing, and Sam leans down to kiss him while he comes. It’s a messy kiss, all teeth and tongue, and Bucky shudders through it while he clutches at Sam. It doesn’t take Sam too long to follow, hands at Bucky’s hips, driving into him with his eyes locked on Bucky’s. Bucky doesn’t even think of looking away for a second. The fragile adoration on Sam’s face is too precious not to treasure.

“So good, Sam,” Bucky murmurs, arching his back, gripping the headboard behind himself for balance. He’s even more boneless than before, languid from coming, but it still feels nice every time Sam pushes in. “You’re so _good.”_

Sam makes a brief, strangled sound and nearly falls right back over on top of him as he comes. Bucky catches him up in his arms, nuzzling the side of Sam’s face, and it doesn’t matter that they’re both sweaty and sticking together with lube and come and lotion that didn’t get rubbed in all the way; Bucky hasn’t thought about Steve since they started touching, all he can think about is Sam. Sam’s sweet face. Sam’s gentle touch.

“Well,” Sam says. He makes no move to get up. “The bed frame works.”

Bucky laughs so loud he startles them both.

 

* * *

 

 _I haven’t slept with anyone since I was fooling around with guys in WWII,_ Bucky doesn’t say. _This is the first time I’ve had sex where I could make noise._

 _I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose you too,_ he doesn’t say either, but Sam gives him the first shower, so maybe they’re thinking the same thing.

 

* * *

 

Bucky makes breakfast for dinner after they’re both showered and dried, lounging in their underwear, Bucky whistling tunelessly while he flips pancakes. _Take a load off, Sammy,_ he’d said. _After all your hard work._

Sam had laughed at him then, and Bucky resolves to keep making him laugh, even if it requires crude jokes and elaborate breakfasts. He piles pancakes high, scrambles eggs, cracking the shells open by tapping them with a metal finger to impress Sam. He pours orange juice, sets the table. Sam’s looking at him the whole time with something unknowable on his face, so Bucky doesn’t even try to know it. He just touches Sam every time he passes him, his shoulder, his jaw, the crown of his head. Hands him a fork.

Doesn’t know how else to say that he cares about him.

They eat in companionable silence, swapping salt and pepper back and forth, and Sam raises his eyebrows when Bucky completely slathers his eggs in hot sauce.

“Dude,” he says.

Bucky shrugs. “One time I got frozen with my mouth open. My taste buds are fucked. Pass the pancakes?”

Sam freezes in the middle of reaching for the plate, deer in the headlights, until his eyes narrow. “You’re fucking with me,” he decides.

Bucky cracks a smile. “I just like hot sauce, man.”

“Unbelievable.” Sam sounds almost impressed. He spears a pancake on his fork before he hands them to Bucky, shaking his head slowly. “Absolutely unbelievable.”

“If that was true, why d’you keep believing me?” Bucky asks, shooting him a wink.

Sam doesn’t have an answer for that.

Bucky’s doing the dishes when Fury calls, so he jerks his head at Sam so he knows he can get the phone. “Barnes’ residence,” Sam says with his customer service voice. Bucky snorts a laugh. Sam sticks his tongue out at him and puts the phone on speaker.

“Good, Wilson, you’re there already,” Fury says. He sounds tired. Has he ever not sounded tired? “Barnes, listen up. You’ll want to hear this.”

Bucky wipes his hands on a dish towel and decides the skillet can wait. “Okay, talk.”

Fury talks, and Bucky listens, the color slowly draining out of his face. Sam’s mouth falls open, a fork clattering to the floor, and the two of them make horrified eye contact while the world shifts out from under their feet again. Bucky thinks, absently, that there really ought to be a cap on how many times in a month that his life can get tipped on its head, but the world never listens and that ought to stop surprising him.

“We’ll be there in fifteen,” Sam says, rough.

“Make it ten,” Fury says. “He doesn’t trust any of us and he doesn’t want to stay.”

“Figures,” Bucky says. “There’s a lot of that going around right now.”

Sam puts his face in his hand, but not before Bucky gets a look at his twisted-up expression.

 

* * *

 

Bucky and Sam make it to the temporary Avengers Compound in record time. Bucky’s just glad they showered before Fury called, because rocking up to mission base with sex hair isn’t high up on his list. He shoves his hands deep in his pockets, shoulders curling in on themselves, and Sam nudges his elbow into his side as they walk. Bucky nudges him back.

“You ready for this?” he asks Sam, voice low.

“No,” Sam answers. “You?”

“Fuck no,” Bucky says.

They walk in anyway, side by side. Fury meets them in the lobby and Bucky has to readjust his previous assessment, because Fury isn’t tired. Fury is exhausted. He nods them toward the elevator, so they get in, and Bucky’s heart is beating hard enough that it lurches sickly when the elevator begins taking them down, underground. Sam’s hand finds his elbow, eyes questioning, and Bucky just makes a small nod. Hopes that’s enough.

Whatever Sam sees on his face must reassure him, because he doesn’t say anything by the time they hit the right floor.

They follow Fury down a long hallway, which reminds Bucky enough of HYDRA that his resentment is palpable. _Fuck underground bases,_ he thinks mutinously. _Fuck bunkers too. Fuck ‘em all._

Fury halts in front of a door and breathes out slowly. “He’s younger than you’re expecting,” he says, shooting an unreadable glance over his shoulder. “Wilson, he won’t know you.”

Sam smiles tightly. “Guess it’s my turn, huh?”

“Jesus, Sam,” Bucky murmurs.

“You took that bullet last time,” Sam says, and God, he might be right, but Bucky can’t tell if he wants to laugh or smack him for saying it.

“Come on,” is all he says instead, and shoulders into the room with Sam right behind him.

Steve is standing by the window with his arms crossed tight over his chest. His head whips around when the door opens, and for one perfect moment, it’s like the stars have completely aligned for the first time in decades. Steve’s face is unburdened by years of worry, open and honest even with suspicion deep in the crease of his brow; his hair sweeps over his forehead in a clean little cowlick and Bucky hurts, looking at him. This is the Steve he was reaching for when he fell, this is the Steve he’s been reaching for ever since, eyes as blue and bright as any other lighthouse. He’s beautiful. He’s so goddamn young.

Then his face crumples and he says, “Bucky?” with his voice breaking on it, and Bucky feels his heart lurch in his chest again.

“Heya, pal,” he says, taking a hesitant step forward. “I don’t know what they’ve told you yet, but –”

Steve is on him before Bucky can finish his thought, throwing his arms around him, hugging him so tight that Bucky can’t breathe. But he doesn’t think he’d have been able to breathe, anyway.

“I thought you were dead,” Steve says thickly.

 _You don’t even know the half of it,_ Bucky thinks, but he doesn’t say as much. He just rubs up and down Steve’s back, meeting Sam’s eyes over Steve’s shoulder. Sam shrugs, looking vaguely nauseated.

“Thought you were smaller,” Bucky murmurs, and this must be the right thing to say, because Steve makes a tiny choked sound and hugs him even tighter.

“Is it really 2024?” he asks once he finally pulls back, eyes wide and wet.

Bucky shares another loaded glance with Sam. “What year did you think it was?”

“1945.” Steve colors, looking away. “...I crashed a plane. Woke up here.”

But that isn’t right, because Steve is meant to wake up after the _Valkyrie’s_ flight in 2012, not a decade and change later. So how did he end up here? Bucky gently disentangles himself from Steve’s embrace, putting his hands on Steve’s shoulders to hold him at bay while he looks him over. If it isn’t Steve, it’s a damn good copy, but Bucky’s lost Steve enough times by now not to trust a miracle.

“Are we sure this is him?” he asks, looking at Fury.

“Ran the tests before I called you,” Fury affirms, and narrows his eye. “You think I’d have dragged you out here without being positive?”

Bucky looks back at Steve, who still looks shattered, staring at Bucky with hungry eyes. So this is what he looked like while Bucky was still in cryo, half starved just like he was, cracked open, the yolk of his soul spilling out as he breathes. Bucky wants to gather him up in his arms again and never let go. He wants a number of nonsensical things, every ancient protective urge coming back from the dead in him at once.

“I need to talk to Sam,” he tells Steve, his hands still on Steve’s shoulders.

Steve nods immediately. “Who’s Sam?”

Sam makes a breath that might have been a pained sound if he didn’t cut it off before it could leave his throat.

“That’s Sam,” Bucky says, nodding his head toward him. “He’s your best friend.”

Steve frowns. “What?”

“Do you trust me?” Bucky asks, searching Steve’s eyes.

“Buck.” Steve leans forward, putting their foreheads together. “God, Buck. You’re the only one I trust.”

Bucky forgot, somewhere in the long slow slide from year to year, that he and Steve were each other’s friend first, everything else in their lives came second. It hasn’t been _you and me against the rest of the world_ for so long that he doesn’t know what to do with it now, what to think, what to say, what to feel. It used to be like this all the time, he remembers. He touches Steve’s face.

“I’ll be back,” he says, and pulls away. He raises his eyebrows at Sam, who returns the gesture. Bucky only glances over his shoulder once as he and Sam leave the room, but when he does, Steve’s hands still look like they want to be reaching for him and the expression on his face is such acute longing that Bucky wishes he hadn’t looked back at all.

“You okay?” he asks Sam very quietly once the door is closed between them and Steve.

“No,” Sam says. “He’s so –”

“Young,” Bucky finishes for him. Sam nods, uncomfortable. “I know. I’m going to take him for coffee. Explain the whole thing, try to get some answers.”

“You think he’ll open up more if you guys are alone.” Sam doesn’t look happy about it, but he also looks like he gets it, even if he’s going to need to hit something later. That seems very sensible to Bucky. “I’ll work with Fury, then. See if he did enough tests. Get Banner in on it, if he isn’t already.”

“Hey.” Bucky curls his hand over the side of Sam’s neck. He would kiss him, but he doesn’t know the boundary for whatever it is that they’re doing now, if it’s just grief-fucking, or something else altogether. He wants to kiss him until Sam’s got fewer ghosts in his eyes, and God, since when has Bucky thought he had that much power to affect him? Maybe his kisses would just piss Sam off more. “Hey,” he says again. “I’m not gonna run off with him.”

“The fact that you think you need to say that doesn’t help you right now,” Sam replies, but he puts a hand on Bucky’s hip, rubbing his thumb up under the hem of his shirt. “Just – loop me in soon.”

“I will.” Bucky tilts Sam’s face up with a curled knuckle under his chin. “I will, Sam.”

It’s Sam that leans up to kiss him, and Bucky can only sink into it gratefully.

 

* * *

 

Bucky takes Steve to coffee. This Steve is jumpy as hell and stares wide-eyed at the billboards, has no idea how to handle himself when someone zooms by on a bicycle with rap music blaring from their speakers. It’s difficult to genuinely fake surprise – this Steve really hasn’t adjusted to the future yet, and he can’t hide how overwhelmed he is by the time they walk into the coffee shop. It’s a kind of ironic role reversal, Steve ready to jump out of his skin and Bucky calmly manhandling him toward the corner of the room to sit down, but he rolls with it as he gets up to order for the both of them.

He comes back with two black coffees, bringing sugar packets back for Steve to stir in himself, and slides one of the cups across the table. Steve takes it gratefully and wraps his hands around it.

“Tell me these didn’t actually cost you two bucks fifty each,” he says, voice small, but disgusted nonetheless.

“Welcome to the future, pal,” Bucky says. “Inflation only gets worse after eighty years.”

Steve’s shoulders curl in on themselves when Bucky says the word _eighty._ Yeah. Bucky has mostly wrapped his head around that now, but that’s a recent thing, and Steve hasn’t had years to work on it.

“Tell me how you’re alive,” Steve says. It comes out like a question, even though it’s worded like an imperative, and Bucky sighs. He fiddles with the handle of his mug.

“I didn’t die when I fell,” he explains, and hates that he has to do this, that he can’t let the fact of him living be a gift with no strings attached. “HYDRA got me. They did a lot of stuff, and none of it’s pretty, so I ain’t gonna give you details.” He risks a glance upward. Steve looks like he’s been stabbed, but he’s still breathing, even though his jaw is clenching and unclenching and his eyes are searing across the table. “Cryostasis kept me young. I did a lot of things I’m not... proud of. But I survived.”

Steve rips open a sugar packet and pours it into his coffee. It’s a lot to take in, Bucky knows, because he lived it, and he got to remember it a little at a time. His own brain protecting him in its own dysfunctional way. He’s impressed that Steve is as stoic as he is, hearing that HYDRA didn’t die when the _Valkyrie_ went down, that he tried to kill himself for nothing. That Bucky was alive and hurting the entire time after Steve crashed into the ice. But then, Steve has heard a lot of horrible and impossible things in his lifetime, and he isn’t usually performatively dramatic. Maybe this is just another drop in the proverbial bucket for him.

“You don’t look surprised at all to see me,” Steve says, tearing open the other packet. He refuses to meet Bucky’s eyes. “You wanna explain that?”

This is the part Bucky is looking forward to the least. “I’m glad to see you,” he tells him. “Don’t think I’m not.”

Steve glances up, sharp. “But?”

“But you aren’t the first Steve Rogers I’ve been reunited with this side of the year 2000,” Bucky says as gently as he can. “And it didn’t go so hot last time.”

At first Steve looks outraged, like he can’t imagine a world in which being reunited with Bucky wouldn’t be an unmitigated good thing; then he shuts his mouth with a click when Bucky keeps talking, hands balled into fists on the table top; then he breaks a coffee stir in his hand with a thin _snap,_ turning to look out the window.

For a decade-long story, it doesn’t take that much time to tell. It helps that Bucky was dead for some of it, so the details aren’t as clear to him as they could be, or as personally traumatic. He lays it out for Steve plainly, no sugar-coating, no obfuscation, and Christ, it’s a crazy fuckin’ story when told all at once. Steve’s face is slightly green by the time he’s through.

“I got you back,” he repeats, each word slow, measured. “And then I left.”

This part of the story isn’t any easier for Bucky to swallow. “Yeah,” he says, rubbing over his jaw. “You did.”

Steve puts his face in his hands. “And you’ve got no idea how I ended up here instead of – what did you say? 2012?”

Bucky shakes his head. “Fury is working on that right now. Don’t worry –” he interrupts before Steve can say whatever he intends to when he opens his mouth. “I’m just as confused about this time travel shit as you are.”

“At least we have that in common,” Steve says, wry, mouth twisting. He nudges his foot against Bucky’s boot, then lets it stay there. “Tell me about Sam.”

Bucky blinks. “Sam?”

“You two seem, um.” Steve shrugs a shoulder, going pink at the ears. “You know. Close.”

Bucky has to drain his mug to hide his reaction, but by the time he’s finished swallowing, he’s ready to tell Steve about Sam – Sam, who didn’t leave him behind – who’s waiting for them both at the Compound – whose eyes are just as tired and sad as the ones Bucky sees every time he looks in a mirror.

 

* * *

 

Bucky takes Steve back when they’ve talked through everything relevant he can think of. They walk slowly so Steve can really take in his surroundings this time, even though Bucky tactfully walks closer to the street to shield Steve from passers-by. Steve shoves his hands deep in his pockets and looks, looks, looks. Bucky hopes that he’s a good kind of dazzled this time, the future unfurling in open flowers beneath Steve’s feet.

That would beat every other time either of them have had to readjust to missing years.

Bucky flashes his helpful Avengers key-card at the door and holds still for the retinal scan, then holds the door open for Steve, who is very carefully covering every emotion he’s feeling. They don’t talk much as they walk back down the hall, to the lab where Sam texted Bucky to meet up with him again. They don’t talk, but Steve keeps shooting Bucky little sideways glances, as if to reassure himself that he’s really there. Their hands nudge together a couple more times than can be accidental.

Sam has his hands braced on a desk, head bowed, when Bucky and Steve step through the door. He smiles tiredly when he raises his head. “Hey,” he says. “How’d your talk go?”

Steve worries the inside of his cheek between his teeth, then exhales heavily. “Come here,” he says, and strides toward Sam, opening his arms. Sam’s eyes widen in surprise but he doesn’t fight it, allows Steve to gather him up in his enormous arms, hugging him close to his chest.

“What’s this for?” he asks, voice slightly muffled by Steve’s shoulder.

“Apparently a different me was a big jerk to you,” Steve tells him, one big hand cradling the back of Sam’s head. “Thank you for helping me when I needed it. I’m sorry I don’t know you, Sam.”

Bucky turns away from the two of them when Sam’s shoulders start trembling, quietly leaving the room to give them both a moment.

He sits down heavily on a bench in the hall, waiting for Steve or Sam or Fury to come find him with more information. He sits there for a while. He puts his head in his hands, breathing evenly, because he knows that if he allows his breath to start hitching, it won’t stop. So he takes long, even inhalations and sighs them out slowly, breath hissing through his teeth, toes curling and uncurling in his boots.

This is not possibly a Steve he will be allowed to keep. Right? Him being here is a glitch in the time stream, he needs to be in 2012, forming the Avengers with the others...

But changing the past doesn’t change the present. Banner explained this to Bucky in overwhelming detail at the beginning of this mess, diagrams included, sketching out the splintering time streams with whiteboard markers. It threatens to melt Bucky’s brain every time he thinks about it too hard, so he doesn’t. Changing the past doesn’t mean changing the present, necessarily, that’s the important part. Does that mean he can keep this Steve?

He looks down the hall toward where Sam and Steve are still talking with hushed voices. Is he willing to fuck over a different timeline in order to do it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Earning my E rating _straight_ off the bat. 
> 
> Be patient with me as I update :)


	3. He Doesn't Speak the Language, He Holds No Currency

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The past is nothing like Steve remembers.

**CHAPTER TWO**

_1945_

 

* * *

 

The past is nothing like Steve remembers.

Well, it is and it isn’t. The buildings are the same, the clothes, the way people talk. Steve goes to the corner store to pick up a couple things for Peggy and is shocked by all the familiar products that he’s forgotten he misses – the sight of the honest to God newspaper stand with the same cantankerous vendor that has always been there makes his chest constrict, of all things. But Steve is off rhythm, he doesn’t talk the way he used to, he can feel people _looking_ at him strangely, and it isn’t because they recognize him from the posters. So far nobody has connected grainy war-reel footage to quiet Grant Rogers who moved in with that Carter woman, and he’s thankful for this in a way he can’t articulate.

They still look at him, though, and he knows it’s because he’s a half a step off from the rest of them. This will get better with time, he’s sure; but for now, it makes his shoulders ache from the strain of keeping them straight while he waits for it to get easier. At the very least, time is the one thing he has in abundance now.

He makes it back to Peggy’s apartment late enough in the morning that he won’t wake anyone up by making noise, letting himself in while he balances the grocery bag on his hip. He takes off his shoes at the door, because his ma raised him with manners, and now he has someone to practice his good manners on.

“I’m home,” he calls out, and has to smile. Yes. He’s home.

“Did you bring the paper?” Bucky calls out hopefully from the living room.

Steve drops the bag off at the kitchen and circles around to the sofa where Bucky is lying in an ungainly sprawl. The stump of his left arm is cradled defensively toward his chest, and Steve needs to change the bandages before it gets too far past noon, he remembers. Bucky has been convalescing well – probably too well, considering his left arm was cut off his body less than two weeks ago – and Steve guesses he knows why that is, this time. Why Bucky was able to keep up with him in WWII when none of the other Commandos could. They aren’t talking about it, but Steve knows, he’s read the reports of what experiments Zola did to him in Azzano with his own eyes. Not really a thing a guy can forget easy.

“Knowing what a fit you’d pitch if I didn’t?” Steve replies, amused, and nudges Bucky’s legs out of the way so he can join him on the couch. “Yeah, pal.”

He’s taken to reading the paper to Bucky in the mornings. It’s still a little difficult for Bucky to operate the thing one-handed, and Steve doesn’t mind the excuse to talk to him, anyway. Not that he needs the excuse anymore. This Bucky is easy to laugh, easy to smile, even though he has nightmares that make him scream himself hoarse more nights than he doesn’t. Steve’s had enough practice calming down a Bucky who’s tearing himself to pieces by now, though, and he takes it all in stride as best he can. Sits on the side of Bucky’s bed, rubs his back until Bucky’s shoulders stop shuddering. Pets through Bucky’s hair, smoothing out the worried crease between his brows with the pad of his thumb. Smiles at him every time Bucky opens his eyes, assuring him with soft words that he isn’t going anywhere. Not this time.

This Bucky is many things. He has full days where he doesn’t seem haunted at all in between the bouts of terror, he’s sweet, flirty as he ever was, and has dimples when he smiles. He’s also twelve years younger than Steve is now, and Steve doesn’t know how he feels about it at all.

The serum made him age kinder than he thinks is probably fair, and he doesn’t look a whole lot older than he was when he and Bucky were the same age. But he feels every year. Every inch that he’s walked, he feels it tugging at him, putting rocks in his coat pockets.

“Steve?” Bucky asks. His brows draw together in concern.

Steve snaps back to the present – this present – and smiles at him. He reaches out, ruffling Bucky’s hair just to watch him wrinkle his nose.

“You wanna hear what’s new?” he asks, snapping the paper open. God, it’s good to be in a time when the Brooklyn paper is still reporting on the Dodgers as a local team.

“Go on,” Bucky says, putting his feet in Steve’s lap. “Hit me with the future.”

Steve’s smile freezes slightly, but he does.

 

* * *

 

Steve still can’t cook worth a damn, but Peggy can’t either, and Bucky’s not used to navigating a kitchen one-handed. So Bucky ends up perched at the kitchen table and bossing Steve around, complaining when Steve inevitably fucks it up. Steve doesn’t mind. He does what Bucky tells him, laughs when Bucky swats his ass with a dish towel, feeds Bucky bites every now and then right off the fork to test his seasoning.

Peggy comes home just when they’re pretty much finished, putting down her briefcase at the door. Steve goes to her and takes her coat, kissing her sweetly before he hangs it up. He can feel her smile against his lips.

“Don’t you make a picture,” she says, amused, and tugs lightly on the bow Steve’s tied at the front of his apron. This is definitely an apron that one of Peggy’s busybody aunts gifted to her, and it fits Steve very badly, but it protects his pants with its pink frills, so he won’t complain.

“If you two are done necking,” Bucky calls out. “I’ve set the table.”

Steve flushes, smiling bashfully, and Peggy calls back, “I’m not quite finished yet,” before she leans up and kisses Steve again. The little anxious clench of Steve’s stomach every time she kisses him hasn’t gone away yet, but he’s optimistic that this will get easier eventually too. It has to, doesn’t it? He just has to get used to getting everything he ever wanted, that’s all, and then he’ll be able to relax and enjoy it. His best friend and his best girl.

“Come to dinner,” he says, tucking a lock of dark hair behind her ear, and is hit with a visceral sense-memory of doing the same thing to Bucky once in the 21st century – just the once, before Bucky’s eyes shuttered and he looked away. Steve swallows, smiles. “I don’t think I completely ruined it this time.”

“You make a perfectly serviceable house-husband,” Peggy tells him, and then smacks Steve’s ass in the exact same place Bucky did earlier when she passes him. Steve has to stand still for a second, blinking, processing that before he has to laugh at himself and follow her into the kitchen.

Dinner is, all told, a quiet and lovely affair. Bucky and Peggy have settled into a conversation pattern that, like the rest of their friendship, is equal parts intelligent and filthy. This means that they’re making fun of Steve most of the time, a collective one-two punch, and Steve has never been more wholeheartedly content to be the butt of a joke.

“I’m done in,” Bucky yawns when his plate is empty, stretching his arm over his head with an audible pop of his shoulder joint. “Don’t make too much noise tonight, kids, some of us need all the sleep we can get.”

Peggy’s smile is more predatory than Steve is honestly comfortable with. “Perhaps you ought to try harder not to listen, James,” she says sweetly. “You are living in my apartment, after all.”

Bucky laughs. “I’m just sayin’, and no offense intended, ma’am, that if I hear one _‘Oh, Captain America’_ ,” he croons in his most offensive falsetto, “I’m gonna get my own place.”

Steve doesn’t think his face has ever been more red. He slouches down in his seat and wonders if he can make it under the table without anyone noticing.

“It’s adorable you think it’s my voice you need to be worried about hearing,” is Peggy’s smirking retort, and that’s officially the end cap for what Steve can handle in one evening.

“Okay,” he says, voice very high. “Okay, I think it’s definitely time to turn in.”

Bucky stands up, shaking his head as he laughs, and takes his plate to the sink to wash. “Always a killjoy, Rogers,” he says fondly. There’s something on his face that he’s not saying out loud, though, and Steve doesn’t want to poke at it. He doesn’t want to give Bucky’s smile an excuse to slip off his face.

He’s done that enough times already.

 

* * *

 

In the bedroom that he shares with Peggy, Steve takes off his shirt, then his trousers, then his undershirt. Peggy is perched on the bed in her underthings, watching him with hot, dark eyes. Steve can’t hardly bear to look at her, she is so beautiful, and his blush hasn’t faded at all as he hooks his thumbs around the waistband of his underwear. He glances up through his eyelashes, looking at her for approval.

“Come here,” Peggy says, holding out a perfectly manicured hand. Steve takes it and lets her pull him into the V between her legs.

They haven’t done this many times. Twice, now, this is the third time, and Steve hopes someday he stops counting. Peggy slides his underwear down his hips, hands smooth except for their gun calluses, and Steve shivers as he’s laid bare.

“Can I...?” he asks, barely above a murmur, and reaches for the clasp of her bra.

Peggy’s face softens and she nods, tipping her head up for a kiss that Steve willingly gives her as he undresses her the rest of the way. She can’t interrogate him with her eyes while they’re kissing, after all, and he presses her back into the mattress so he can cover her body with his own. Bare skin on skin is so much better than anything he else he’s felt in his life, warm and _real,_ and Steve has come to appreciate real above everything else. He kisses her neck, careful not to suck too hard anywhere her shirt collar can’t cover.

“Steve,” she sighs, arching her back against him, and Steve slides his hand down her side, cups over her hip, slips his hand between her legs to touch her there. He still doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, but he can take direction as well as any other soldier, he guesses, and Peggy has never been afraid to boss him. She bites his lower lip as he moves his fingertips in cautious circles that get bolder as he works out what she likes. The fact that he is allowed to do this at all makes his head swim.

Peggy gets impatient and flips him onto his back, and Steve is surprised enough that he goes down easy, head hitting the pillow with a _thump_. She smiles, perched on top of his thighs, and he smiles helplessly back.

Things move very quickly after that. One of them gets a rubber and he puts in on with trembling hands, Peggy giving his neck the same treatment he gave hers, except she bites a little harder and murmurs filthy things in Steve’s ear that don’t help his hands from shaking. He flips their position again, using his godforsaken serum-enhanced strength for good for once, and kisses her firm on the mouth as he nudges her knees apart and slides between them. Holding his breath as he sinks into her.

It’s so good that it’s overwhelming. His kisses turn into open-mouthed pants, the two of them sharing the same air, the same breath, as he begins to move. She grasps at his shoulders, at his back, legs tight around him, and Steve moans in a way that is definitely much closer to a whimper than he’d like it to be. He buries his face in the curve of her throat and tries to keep a steady pace.

He can’t stop making noise. Bucky’s comments had just been that, teasing banter, but now Steve can’t stop thinking about it. About Bucky listening, Bucky hearing the way Peggy moans when he angles it just right, the way Steve whines when Peggy starts rolling her hips to meet his.

Bucky is across the hall, lying in his bed, knowing that Steve is making love to Peggy right now. That thought makes a frisson of awful, guilty arousal spike all the way down Steve’s spine. _Oh no,_ he thinks, but it’s too late, the thought has gripped him with sharp claws. Does it turn Bucky on, thinking about it? Hearing the muffled sounds of Steve and Peggy’s bodies moving in the next room over?

Steve starts moving more desperately, and Peggy matches him, the same flush working down her throat that has the last two times she’s gotten close. Steve braces himself on his left arm so his right can work her over while his hips keep moving, and she clenches her legs tight around him as she topples over the edge, and Steve – Steve –

Steve is thinking about Bucky when he comes, Bucky’s eyes framed by dark lashes, the perfect curl of his lips when they form Steve’s name.

_Oh no,_ he thinks again, despair setting in as soon as his orgasm begins to ebb. _Oh God._

Peggy is petting up and down his back, murmuring about how good he did, and Steve kisses whatever part of her is in front of his mouth. Over and over, soft kisses, trying to keep the mounting panic at bay.

 

* * *

 

Steve goes to work with Peggy in the morning, touching the crown of Bucky’s head as he passes him. Bucky sticks his tongue out at him, and Steve thwaps his head with the paper, and all is right with the world again – or at least it ought to be. Steve doesn’t want to admit even to himself that last night has changed the way he operates, but his hand tingles now from where he’s made contact with Bucky.

That awareness prickles up his whole arm as he goes to SHIELD headquarters with Peggy, the brand new headquarters, the doors to which fill Steve with enough dread to walk through that he knows he’s doing the right thing. He’s going to fix SHIELD from the inside out – he’s going to make sure that they don’t repeat the mistakes that were made before. He’s aware that this might just lead to making new ones, but the mistakes he makes this time aren’t going to lead to Nazis infiltrating every corner of the American government, anyway.

At least, he hopes so.

Peggy lets him help with the paperwork, lets him stand behind her in meetings with his arms crossed, unimpressed, while the men working under her try to undermine her authority. They’re much less inclined to talk shit with Steve Rogers standing right beside her, raising his eyebrows.

“Are they always this awful to you?” he asks once the last one has left, turning to Peggy with disgust on his face.

Peggy arches one penciled brow. “Steven, this was a good day.”

Right. Right. Because Steve has forgotten that it’s worse for women in this decade than what Ms. Potts and Natasha would complain about in the 21st century. He doesn’t even let himself think about what it would be like for Sam to be here with him, and, God, Sam. Steve shuffles the papers in his hands and goes to a filing cabinet to put them away. Guilt eats at him like acid when he remembers Sam. He couldn’t even tell him that he was going away, that’s how guilty he is about the whole thing, that’s how badly he didn’t want to see betrayal and hurt bloom across Sam’s face. Bad enough that Steve saw it on Bucky’s.

“It’s alright,” Peggy says from her desk, puzzled. “You know I’m not afraid of hard work.”

Steve turns, a smile pasted on, and locks the cabinet. “I know, Peg. Want me to grab you some lunch before I head back?”

Peggy puts her elbow on her desk, chin in hand. “You really are a house-husband,” she decides, her own smile indulgent. “Yes, dear, I’d appreciate some lunch before you go home.”

Steve kisses the crown of her head, her familiar perfume in his nose, and disappears from Peggy’s office to slip down to the SHIELD canteen, where he collects her something good before it gets taken by all the annoying men that he wants to personally smack for her. That’d be a good use of the weight behind the Captain America name, wouldn’t it? Socking misogynists in the jaw?

He takes the tray back to Peggy’s desk, finding her deep in conversation on the telephone. She smiles at him briefly, absently, before snapping, “Yes, I _know_ what it costs, Howard, I did the math myself.”

Steve doesn’t really want to talk to Howard, or be in the same room while Peggy does, so he takes his exit with a little wave before he shuts the door. Certain wounds are a little too fresh still, even though _this_ Howard Stark isn’t going to be executed by the Winter Soldier this time around.

Because the Winter Soldier is waiting at home for Steve to change his bandages one last time before seeing if they can take them off for good.

Steve goes home and thinks about Sam the whole way there, even though he tries not to. Sam’s smile. Sam’s steady hand. Sam’s loyalty, which Steve should never have asked for, even though he never resisted it once offered. What kind of friend does this make him? What kind of man? Not the good man Erskine had seen in him all those decades ago, but then, Steve has never seen that man in himself. He’s just a scared kid who was given boots too big to fill, serum or no.

“Hey, Buck,” he calls out when he unlocks the door, kicking off his shoes again.

Bucky doesn’t answer. Steve frowns, shutting the door behind himself and locking it again. Bucky isn’t on the couch, which is where Steve expected him to be, and he isn’t in the kitchen either. Steve ducks his head into Bucky’s room and finds him passed out asleep in his bed, dark hair in disarray on his pillow, face screwed up like he’s having a bad dream. It isn’t uncommon for Bucky to nap in the middle of the day as he recovers, but from what he describes, it’s usually the kind of foggy mid-afternoon rest that leaves him feeling like he’d only just closed his eyes when he wakes up.

That isn’t the case this time. Bucky tosses his head, whining softly, and Steve pads into his bedroom to perch on the edge of his mattress, reaching out to carefully smooth back the sweaty hair that clings to Bucky’s forehead.

“It’s alright, pal,” he murmurs. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

He learned, with the other Bucky, that he has to talk to him when he touches him in an unexpected way. Otherwise it’s all too easy for a faceless friendly touch to to trigger an unpleasant memory and make the whole thing worse – so Steve talks, and he combs fingers through Bucky’s damp hair, smiling down at him when Bucky finally manages to rouse himself. Bucky blinks up at him through filmy eyes that slowly clear.

“How d’you always do that?” he croaks, once he’s sitting up and sipping at a glass of water that Steve fetches for him. “How d’you always get it right?”

Steve is confused. “What do you mean?”

Bucky waves an impatient hand. “You ain’t ever had this good bedside manner. Used to clap me awkwardly on the shoulder and that was that.” His eyes narrow. “What pathetic, prickly creature were you lookin’ after when I was gone?”

_You,_ Steve thinks somewhat desperately. _Buck, it’s only ever been you._

“Maybe I just pity you, ever think about that?” is all he says, though, and keeps touching Bucky’s hair, just because he can. He doesn’t care that Bucky is gross and clammy. He just wants to touch him. “You gonna want to sleep some more or can I take a look at your arm?”

Bucky sighs, still looking suspicious, but he also holds out the stump of his left arm. Steve takes that as the answer he needs and slowly unravels the bandages to reveal skin that is pink and shiny and new. No more blood. That’s a damn good sign. He tosses the bandages and gives Bucky’s arm a thorough once-over, looking for any signs of infection, of irritation – but Bucky looks good. His scars are intense, thick as rope in some places, thin and spider-webbed in others, but they’ve already faded to pink from the angry red they were at the beginning, and Steve has high hopes that they’ll grow silver with age.

“Congrats, Buck,” he says, and smiles at him. “No more bandages. Long as you take it easy for a while, you should be fine.”

“Great,” Bucky says with a great deal less enthusiasm. “No more bandages. Now I just gotta look at it all the time.”

Steve bends his head to kiss right in the center of the largest knot of scar tissue. It’s hot under his mouth, because Bucky always runs a little hot now. Steve cups under Bucky’s arm to hold it up while he kisses it, a soft, lingering press of lips to skin. It’s too intimate of a gesture. He knows it. But he does it anyway, looking Bucky dead in the eye when he pulls back.

“There’s nothing ugly about you,” Steve says. He wishes to God he’d said it to the other Bucky while he still could, but he says it now, to this one, and means it. “Not a damn thing.”

Bucky’s confusion goes to war with the flush that springs to his face, not expecting the compliment. He gapes at Steve, mouth hanging open, and looks away just in time for Steve to watch his ears turn pink. This is a side of him that Steve knows and isn’t sure anyone else has ever cottoned on to: Bucky oozes easy confidence, but genuine compliments that he doesn’t anticipate always knock him flat on his ass.

Because Bucky doesn’t actually think he’s the best, under it all. Because Steve isn’t the only one who grew up with something to prove. They don’t talk about it a lot, and Bucky left his magen david on its chain at home when he went to war, but that doesn’t make it less true.

“You want some lunch?” Steve asks, carefully taking his hands back from Bucky’s left shoulder, easing it down to rest against Bucky’s side. Bucky lets him. “Pretty sure I can make a sandwich without butchering it.”

“Okay,” Bucky says. “Just – gimme a minute.”

“Sure,” Steve says, affable as ever, and stands up. He leaves Bucky to go to the kitchen, where he braces his hands on the kitchen counter for a couple long breaths, wondering what the hell he thinks he’s doing.

 

* * *

 

Bucky excuses himself early from dinner that night. He’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt even though it’s starting to get warmer, the left sleeve pinned up so it doesn’t just flop around. It covers up the scars, though, and Steve hopes what he said isn’t rattling around uncomfortably in Bucky’s head.

Bucky disappears down the hall to his bedroom and Steve follows him with his eyes, concern radiating off his face.

“Sometimes it’s impossible to be cheerful,” Peggy says softly, putting her fork down. “Leave him be, Steve.”

That’s the hardest thing in the world for Steve to do – leave Bucky be, that is – but he trusts Peggy’s judgement. He finishes his dinner. Takes both their plates to the sink, where Peggy washes and he dries without having to negotiate the task at all. He likes that about her, that she takes charge and would be affronted if he questions her about it. He likes that he knows where they stand, and knows what she wants from him.

He especially knows what she wants from him when she turns around and wipes her wet hands down the front of his apron, lips curling. “Would you like to go to bed, Steven?” she asks him, undoing the laces so she can peel the damp garment off him.

Steve nods. What else can he do, after a suggestion like that?

Peggy takes him by the hand and pulls him to the bedroom, where they fall into the same pattern that they’ve fallen into since Steve came back. This is the fourth time. _Quit counting,_ he tells himself, annoyed, but he’s too aware of time passing for it to work any; this is the fourth time, the fourth after he thought he would get nothing, and it makes his hands tremble when he touches her.

He gets ten minutes into it before he can’t catch his breath. He makes a quiet wounded sound, the kind he makes when he wakes up from dreams of Bucky’s hand slipping out of his grasp, and then he has to roll off her and sit on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands until the world stops spinning. It’s been a while since this happened to him. He learned to put a name to it in the five years between the snap and the resurrection, but he still doesn’t want to say it, not even to himself. His ears ring, like bad radio static. He shudders and shudders.

Peggy rubs up and down his back, murmuring softly to him, and all it takes is Steve remembering that this is what he does for _Bucky_ for him to start sobbing. Horrible wracking sobs too, not the pretty kind, shoulders wrenching as he gasps wetly. Tears fall down to soak the knees of the trousers he’s still wearing. He didn’t even make it out of his pants.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Peggy asks once he seems to be starting to slow down. She sounds very worried, and Steve can’t bear to look at her. “Did I...?”

Steve doesn’t let her get two words into asking if she did something wrong before he shakes his head. “It ain’t you,” he says thickly. “I’m happy _,_ Peg.”

She makes a dubious sound. “Are you?”

“I’m _happy,”_ Steve repeats miserably. “I am. I got everything I wanted. I should be happy.”

Peggy’s hand rubs up and down his back a couple more times, then her cheek comes down to rest against his shoulder. “Do you need to go to him?” she asks. Steve can hear how carefully she’s choosing her words.

He shrinks into himself even more, if such a thing is possible. “That isn’t how this is supposed to go.”

“He loves you, you know,” she says. She sounds tired, but not offended. “He won’t turn you away.”

Steve turns to look at her with a face that’s just as shocked as it is tear-streaked. “What are you even talking about?” he asks, bewildered. “It’s not like that, with him. It’s never been like that.”

Peggy slides around behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist as she tucks her chin over his shoulder. She’s got a leg on either side of his hips, kissing the nape of his neck. “Perhaps that’s the problem, darling,” she suggests gently.

But Bucky isn’t – Bucky doesn’t – it isn’t _like_ that. Steve imagines reaching out and putting a hand on Bucky’s stomach and feels his own stomach cramp hard enough to make him hiccup one last sob. “How are you okay with this?” he demands.

“Loving you isn’t a terrible thing to have in common,” Peggy says, directly against the curve of his throat. Her lips brush his skin as she talks, and Steve’s whole body shivers as he thinks that over. Going back to the past to love Peggy, that’s his duty. Going to the past to love Peggy and Bucky both – that has to be gluttony, doesn’t it?

“What, did you two talk about it or something?” he asks weakly, scrubbing a hand down his face.

“As a matter of fact.” Peggy kisses him again, a little lower. “We have.”

Steve goes still as stone. “...Beg your pardon?”

“We talked about it,” Peggy repeats. She’s got a hand over Steve’s stomach, keeping his back pressed to her front, and it’s a good thing too, or Steve would’ve jumped up from the bed otherwise. Or maybe even out of his own skin. “During the war. You didn’t notice us become friends?"

Steve did notice, is the thing, he’s just always thought that he had a bigger hand in it than he did, apparently. “Jeez, Peg,” he croaks. “Am I the last person on earth to know?”

She sighs and rests her forehead against his back, right over his spine. “No,” she decides. “Or you would have gotten in much more trouble than you did for disobeying orders for him.”

Steve wants to fight that interpretation of events, but she isn’t wrong. “Fuck,” he says succinctly.

“Talk to him,” Peggy repeats. Another kiss, directly between his shoulder blades. “You’ll both feel better. And perhaps you’ll stop moping.”

“I don’t mope,” Steve tries.

“Yes, you do,” Peggy says firmly. “Now come to bed, darling, I can still hold you for several hours before sunrise.”

Steve always does what she says. He takes off his trousers, draping them over the back of a desk chair, and slips between the sheets so he can scoot close to Peggy. She wraps her arms around him immediately, nudging him until he rolls onto his side so she can spoon right up behind him. She reaches over him briefly to turn off the light, but she settles again almost immediately, nuzzling into his neck.

“This isn’t ‘cause I don’t love you,” Steve whispers. “Because I do, Peggy.”

Peggy squeezes him hard enough around the middle that he knows she means it. “I’m your friend first,” she reminds him. “Everything else is second.”

Steve stares out into the dark of the bedroom, feeling sick.

“You can love him too,” she adds, just as soft a whisper as his own. “I know that doesn’t mean you love me less.”

Steve closes his eyes. He doesn’t say anything, but he puts his hand over Peggy’s forearm and squeezes back, and he hopes she gets the message.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter summary: Peggy Carter is a Top.


	4. Amen and Hallelujah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky thinks about it, briefly, from Steve’s perspective. This Steve’s Bucky died in front of him less than a month ago, and since then, Steve has arrived a hundred years later to a new reality where his best friend is both alive and gay. This would be shocking to anyone.

**CHAPTER THREE**

_2024_

 

* * *

 

This Steve loves television. Bucky can park him in front of the thing and Steve will watch, enraptured, for hours. The way his jaw drops when Bucky tells him that Disney just kept on making movies while he was frozen makes Bucky feel like his insides are hot enough to melt, that’s how damn cute it is.

This Steve also gets so excited over the amount of fresh fruit and vegetables that people can eat year round, now, that Bucky says _fuck it_ and takes him to a farmer’s market just to watch his face light up. This is the first time Bucky has ever seen the new future through eyes that are genuinely excited to be here, even eighty years displaced, and Bucky can only assume this is because Steve isn’t doing it alone. As far as Steve knows, he miraculously survived a plane crash he’d intended to die in, miraculously woke up in a brand-new land of plenty, with his dead best friend miraculously resurrected at his side. Bucky can’t really blame him for enjoying himself.

So he buys Steve every fruit he sets his eyes on, doesn’t let Steve look at how much money is changing hands – credit cards, so useful – and sits him down on a park bench where they eat the lot until their hands are stained and sticky.

“You remember the winter we got that one orange?” Steve asks, mouth full of raspberries. “And it was just – so sour. But we had to pretend it was good because it was the one orange we got?”

Bucky laughs, ducking his head. He doesn’t remember. It sounds like something that would happen to the two of them, though, the sourest pair of oranges who ever lived in Brooklyn. “How’re these ones for ya?” he asks, tossing Steve a satsuma.

Steve weighs it in a palm with a tiny little smile on his face. “Not bad at all,” he says. Bucky smiles at him, but that just makes Steve look away again, squinting off into the middle distance. “You gonna tell me what’s eating you?”

“Jeez, Steve,” Bucky mutters. He looks down at his left hand and wonders absently how on earth he’s gonna get flecks of orange zest out from between the metal plates when they get home. “Nothing’s eating me.”

“Bull.” Steve nudges him with his knee. “You might be an internationally recognized assassin now, but I still know your fibbing face.”

That’s because Bucky isn’t trying very hard, and he’s gotten used to a Steve that doesn’t call him on his shit, out of guilt or remorse or a desire to keep the status quo. Bucky forgot how annoying it is. How frustrating and relieving all at once, to be seen by somebody who can peel him back layer by layer until all that remains is the rubbed-raw truth.

“Just fretting over plans for the future,” he explains, resting his forearms on his knees. “Your future, I mean.”

Steve goes very, very still. “What are you talking about?”

Bucky looks at him. “Are you gonna stay, or are you going back to when you’re meant to wake up?”

“2012,” Steve murmurs. He’s got a smear of peach juice on his chin. Bucky grabs a napkin before he can think about it too hard, then licks it and rubs the juice off the edge of Steve’s jaw. “Gross, Buck,” Steve complains, not pulling away.

“Big baby,” Bucky says. He balls up the napkin and lobs it into a nearby trash can. “C’mon. What’re you thinking?”

Steve’s forehead creases as he mulls it over. “I don’t really see,” he says, “why I’d even consider goin’ to someplace in time where you aren’t.”

Bucky’s chest seizes. “Steve...”

“No, really,” Steve says. He picks at the paper bag some cherries had come in. “Why would I go to 2012 when you’re here? You died two and a half weeks ago, for me. I’d barely even started to mourn.”

Ancient history isn’t so ancient, for this Steve. It’s hard for Bucky to remember this. The past sinks such sharp teeth into him that he doesn’t know what it would feel like for it not to, for it to feel immediate and real and not at all slippery. He rubs the heel of his hand over his temple, grimacing.

“Sorry,” Steve says quietly. “Probably not your favorite subject, huh.”

“It happened,” Bucky replies. He puts his hand on Steve’s knee and squeezes it in a way he hopes is reassuring. “Better to call it what it is, yeah?”

Steve swallows like it hurts. “Those were the longest two and a half weeks of my life,” he says.

“I know.”

“I really did want to die when I crashed the _Valkyrie._ ”

“...I know, pal.”

“I don’t know why he’d _do_ that,” Steve spits out, suddenly furious.

“He?” Bucky asks.

Steve shoots him a wild-eyed look. “The other me.”

The other Steve. The wanderer who couldn’t stay still for a moment. “Nomad,” Bucky jokes, though it falls flat, the truth of it echoing after Bucky says it. He _is_ a nomad. He and Bucky both are, flip-flopping through time periods restlessly, but Bucky is ready to set roots down in this century and he guesses Steve isn’t. The other Steve, that is. _My Steve_ , he thinks guiltily.

This Steve has a stubborn set to his jaw that Bucky knows better than anything, so he decides that they’ve talked about it enough for one day.

“C’mon,” Bucky says, standing up, brushing bits of orange peel off his jeans. “Sam’s waiting for us at my place.”

Steve looks mutinous, but he doesn’t wait long to follow, wiping his hands on his napkin. “Sam’s nice,” he offers, gathering up their trash so he can stuff it into a nearby garbage can. “I can see why I’m supposed to like him.”

Bucky scrapes his hair back and ties it up neatly, because he’s tired of it falling into his face, and smiles at that. “He’s a good guy. Good backup too, couldn’t ask for a better wingman.”

Steve fiddles with the cuff of his jacket. “Is that what you guys are?” he asks, studiously adjusting the sleeve. “Wingmen?”

Bucky is one hundred percent not ready for this conversation. “He’s a friend,” he says, a note of warning in his voice. He shoves his hands into his pockets. “My best friend, maybe.”

“I lost my slot, huh?” Steve asks. His eyes are raw and red-rimmed. “Can’t say I blame you.”

“Well.” Bucky shrugs a shoulder, deeply uncomfortable. “You ‘n I never banged ‘cause we were grieving. So.”

Steve’s eyes are very wide. “Oh,” he says.

“Yeah,” Bucky says.

They both decide unanimously without having to say another word that it’s time to go home and contemplate their own embarrassment in silence.

 

* * *

 

“Will you stick around a while longer?” Bucky asks Sam while Steve is washing up. He’s cleaning up the last of the mess they left when they went to go meet Steve, and he’s glad for the excuse of something to do with his hands while he makes this particular offer to Sam. “I don’t mean move _in_ with me,” he adds hastily, eyes snapping up. “Just, you know, while Steve’s here. I wouldn’t mind some backup. You can take the guest room and everything.”

“Sure you don’t want me in your room?” Sam asks, dry, putting Bucky out of his misery before he can keep on babbling. His hand finds the small of Bucky’s back while Bucky dries the skillet from earlier. “Put Steve in your guest room, I’ll bunk with you.”

“You just want me to spoon you,” Bucky mutters, leaning into Sam’s touch.

“Shut your mouth before I make you, Barnes,” Sam replies, no heat in his voice, and Bucky has to smile.

So they get Steve settled in the guest room, which is really just an air mattress on the ground with a lamp nearby until they furnish it better, but Steve doesn’t seem to mind. He takes off his jacket and bounces once on the air mattress, remarking, “Coulda used one of these things back in the day, huh? Woulda fallen asleep on the couch less.”

“Sofa wasn’t so bad,” Bucky says, shrugging. “Nice cushions.”

He and Steve share a loaded glance, remembering all the times they’d stripped the pillows off the couch and made a fort, tangling up together so they could share a flashlight and read the same comic book. It’s Steve who looks away first, and Bucky wonders what he’s thinking. Wishes, not for the first time, that he could read Steve’s mind. He used to be able to get pretty close. But this Steve is an enigma to him, unfamiliar after years of separation.

“Holler if you need anything,” Bucky says, and retreats back to his bedroom. Sam takes a bit longer to follow him, and Bucky can hear the low rumble of his and Steve’s voices as he strips out of his clothes and puts on pajamas. He can’t make out what they’re saying, and he doesn’t really want to; he wants to let Sam have whatever moments he can have, with the only Steve they’ve got. Even if it’s one that doesn’t know him.

Maybe they’ll become friends again, Bucky thinks, as he pulls on his sweatpants. They’ve got enough stuff in common, even if it isn’t the right stuff. That’s a pretty miserable thought, though, so Bucky pushes it away and sifts through his dresser until he comes up with a shirt. That’s when Sam walks in.

“Don’t wear that on my account,” Sam drawls, nudging the door closed with his hip, and Bucky feels the worst of the worried tension drain out of his body. Thank God for Sam.

Bucky tosses the shirt back into the drawer and sits on the edge of his bed with a sigh. “You wanna go first or should I?”

Sam rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Detailed scans showed traces of Pym particles on Steve’s body,” he says, sitting down on the edge of Bucky’s desk chair. “Just traces, but it’s still weird and –” He waves a hand, searching for the right word. “Y’know. Anachronistic.”

Bucky has to smile. “You’re wasting those five-dollar words on me, Wilson.”

“Am not,” Sam says, jabbing an accusatory finger in Bucky’s direction. “I watch how fast you tear through books, asshole.”

Bucky shrugs, his grin turned shit-eating. Sam slaps the side of Bucky’s ankle. Bucky naturally has to try to kick him, then, which makes Sam jump up and tackle him backward, and they tumble around in a tangle of limbs until Bucky’s got Sam pinned beneath them. They’re both panting, catching their breath.

“Got me,” Sam says, voice slightly rougher.

“Got you,” Bucky echoes, softer.

He bends down and kisses him, because an opportunity is an opportunity, and the way Sam kisses back all soft and sweet makes him think that Sam probably needs it as much as he does. Bucky tugs at Sam’s lower lip with his teeth to make Sam moan.

“Was that all the new info?” he asks, pulling back just far enough to lean on his elbows and look at Sam’s face.

Sam hums and strokes his fingers through Bucky’s hair, teasing a tangle apart with his fingertips. “We don’t know where or how he got into Pym energy,” he says. “All the big brains we know are trying to track down exactly when he disappeared from his era.”

“Ugh,” Bucky says, on principle.

“I know,” Sam agrees. He strokes through Bucky’s hair again. “Your turn.”

Bucky shrugs a shoulder. “Steve... doesn’t want to leave. He wants to stay here. We had a whole fight about it earlier.”

Sam’s eyebrows arch. “A fight?”

“A verbal disagreement over fruit.” One corner of Bucky’s mouth twitches. “Also, I told him we’re fucking.”

Sam pinches Bucky’s side so fast Bucky doesn’t see it coming. He squeaks, squirming off of Sam, but Sam just takes the opportunity to roll on top of him and tickle his side until Bucky shrieks and Sam’s laughing at him.

“I’m tapping out,” Bucky gasps, flailing an arm to slap the pillow next to him. “This is me, tapping!”

“Whiner,” Sam says affectionately. “How’d he take it, anyway?”

Bucky catches his breath, raking hair out of his face. “Dunno, we didn’t talk about it much. And sorry for not... asking first. It kinda just slipped out.”

Sam catches Bucky’s metal hand and brings it up to his lips, where he kisses the back of Bucky’s wrist. The servos in Bucky’s left arm whirr, metal plates recalibrating with a metallic shiver all the way up to his shoulder.

“I was probably gonna tell him anyway, if you were okay with it,” Sam says. “I’m not trying to keep this secret, Buck.”

That means more to Bucky than he can say, so he just strokes his thumb over Sam’s jaw and hopes he understands. “And what is ‘this’, exactly?” he murmurs.

Sam lets him keep touching him, staying perfectly still for it. “I don’t know yet,” he answers, honest, as Bucky’s fingertips trace over the bow of his lips. “But I was plannin’ on letting us figure it out.”

Bucky shoots Sam the cheesiest grin he can muster. “Can it involve a kiss?”

“Jeez,” Sam murmurs. “You’re trouble, alright.”

He kisses him though, firm and deep, so Bucky supposes it can’t be the kind of trouble that Sam doesn’t want.

 

* * *

 

Much later, both of them are significantly more undressed and Sam has his cheek pressed to Bucky’s shoulder, his arm draped over Bucky’s waist. Bucky absentmindedly skates fingertips up and down Sam’s spine, then turns and presses his face into Sam’s hair. He squeezes his eyes closed.

“He can’t really stay,” he says. “Can he?”

Sam sighs, breath ghosting over the curve of Bucky’s throat. “I don’t know, Buck.”

But when Bucky said _he can’t really stay_ he meant _we can’t really keep him_ and when Sam said _I don’t know_ he meant _I wish to God we could,_ so the two of them fall into the same uneasy silence, hearing what they didn’t say echo around in their heads.

Across the hall, Bucky knows Steve is lying on his air mattress, probably as sleepless as Bucky suspects they’re both going to be. But Bucky eventually drifts off, safe with Sam in his arms, and hopes drowsily as he does so that Steve manages to find some rest as well.

Even if neither of them are built for peace.

 

* * *

 

“Shabbat shalom,” Steve greets brightly from the kitchen as soon as Bucky walks through the doorway the next morning.

Bucky blinks. Steve is reading the actual goddamn newspaper, which would be jarring enough – the Steve Bucky is most familiar with gets news alerts on his phone that he wrinkles his nose at and then ignores, he doesn’t pour over the paper with a keen eye anymore. But this Steve does. Bucky bets he’s going to hear an outraged noise all the way across the apartment when Steve gets to the sports section.

The other jarring part is that Bucky didn’t even know it was Shabbat until Steve mentioned it. It’s Saturday morning, well past Friday sunset, and Bucky realizes with a pang that he hasn’t been to shul in eighty years. He’s had more important things to deal with, and Hashem makes all kinds of exceptions for life and death circumstances, but still. It’s a weird feeling.

“...Shabbat shalom,” he says anyway, touching Steve’s shoulder as he passes him to get a cup of coffee.

“You gonna go to services?” Steve asks, turning the page with a decisive flick of his wrist. “Sorry if I disrupted your ritual yesterday, I didn’t even think about it until this morning.”

“You disrupted a whole lot more than Shabbat,” Bucky snorts, leaning against the counter, but he smiles when Steve looks up at him. “Don’t sweat it, pal. I haven’t exactly been, y’know. Keeping up with it.” His coffee is dark, mirroring his face back to him in a reflection that ripples.

Steve looks at him for a long moment, as if trying to decide how much he believes him. “Huh,” he says, then shakes his head as he looks back to the paper. “Well, if you wanna go, you might need to get a move on, it’s almost eight.”

“Hm.” Bucky swirls his coffee, thinking about it. He truly doubts that a d’var Torah from a rabbi in upstate New York will give him any insight into what to do here, but the idea is appealing in a way he did not anticipate. He doesn’t own a siddur or a tallit anymore, doesn’t even have a kiddush cup, and he has an uneasy feeling that most of his Jewish paraphernalia from back before either ended up in a museum or in the empty casket his mother buried. He isn’t sure which idea bothers him more.

“Will you and Sam get a havdalah candle while I’m out?” he asks out of the blue, worrying the inside of his cheek between his teeth as he meets Steve’s gaze again.

Steve’s smile is lopsided and familiar. “Sure, pal. No problem.”

Bucky doesn’t even know where the nearest Jewish market is. He lives in New York, it shouldn’t be too difficult to locate, but it’s overwhelming just trying to think about finding a synagogue to go to. He’s been to enough therapy by now to know that only means it’s probably a really good idea, though.

“I’d better put on some pants,” he says, resigned, and drains his coffee cup in three big swallows.

“I don’t think God really wants to see you in your underwear,” Steve agrees blandly.

“His fault for makin’ me so hot,” Bucky sighs, and puts his cup in the sink before he heads back toward the bedroom. Steve’s choked laughter follows him.

Sam is still dozing right where Bucky left him. _Must’a really worn him out last night,_ Bucky thinks, not without a degree of smugness, and bends down to kiss Sam’s forehead. Sam makes an endearingly sleepy noise and squints up at him.

“Hn. ‘Sup?” he asks blearily.

Bucky smiles. “I’m gonna go to shul. Gave Steve an errand to take you on.”

Sam rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand. “An errand?”

“Yeah. Ain’t a hard one. You gonna get up soon?”

“In theory.” Sam stretches his arms over his head with a yawn. “Wait. Shul?”

“Jewish church,” Bucky says, scritching over Sam’s scalp. “I ain’t been in a while.”

“I know what shul is,” Sam says. “Which one are you going to?”

Bucky blinks, caught off-guard for the second time this morning. “Uh. I don’t know.”

Sam gives him an assessing look. “You want the name of the one my aunt goes to?”

As it turns out, Bucky really does, so he lets Sam put directions to the synagogue on his phone and puts on pants. Socks too, then his shoes, and Bucky’s tying his hair back when Sam sits up and starts to put on his own clothes.

“I didn’t know you were Jewish too,” Bucky says, tightening his ponytail.

Sam smiles. “On my mom’s side.”

Bucky’s eyes crinkle at the corners when he returns it. “Always told my ma I’d find a nice Jewish person to settle down with.”

“Uh huh.” Sam rolls his eyes. “I’m sure this is just what she had in mind.”

“Close enough. And thank you,” Bucky adds, grabbing his wallet, his keys. “For the help.”

“If you feel like saying kaddish for Riley, that’d be cool,” Sam tells him, pulling a crewneck on over his head. “But no worries, man.”

Bucky kisses Sam swiftly, morning breath be damned, and loves him so fiercely in this moment that it nearly drowns him.

 

* * *

 

Synagogue is different than it used to be. Well, it is and it isn’t. The little saftas are the same, bundled up in their shawls, all seated together so they can gossip. Bucky makes eye contact with one of them and ducks his head to look away. The sanctuary is larger than any he’s ever been in – the tiny, cramped basement synagogue he grew up in never had such enormous windows, such a large, proud ark. _Two_ Torahs are nestled inside with reverence.

Bucky borrows a tallit from the stack near the door and mutters the prayer, putting it on before he takes a seat in the very back pew. He twitches what he hopes is a smile toward anybody who looks at him as they walk by, but nobody pays him too much mind aside from a cursory curious glance. The prayer book is fairly familiar, and the parts he doesn’t know are mostly in English; he flips through the whole thing absentmindedly, looking for the words he remembers.

“Good morning, everybody, and good shabbos,” the rabbi announces as she rises to the bimah. Bucky’s head snaps up.

The rabbi is a woman. She stands behind the microphone with her wife and son to start the service and Bucky feels an enormous emotion roar up inside him, the holiest feeling he has felt in a very long time. He’s known that he would never follow Steve back to the past this whole time, but he hasn’t realized until now just how fucking _glad_ he is to be in the 21st century.

Then everyone starts singing the _sh’ma_ and Bucky chokes up so hard he can’t think about anything at all.

 

* * *

 

He sneaks out at the end, slipping out the sanctuary door like the ghost he is after the _aleinu,_ although he takes a moment to fold up the borrowed tallit in the entry room before he completely disappears. He’s about to vanish when an old, wavering voice calls out, “Where do you think you’re going, young man?” and Bucky freezes.

“Um,” he says, and turns. The safta he’d made eye contact with briefly has her arms crossed over her chest. “I was... I gotta go.”

“I haven’t seen you here before,” she says, eyes narrowed.

Bucky shoves his hands in his jacket pockets. “I don’t mean to intrude, ma’am.”

Her eyes flash. “Nonsense,” she says firmly, and grabs one of Bucky’s elbows, tugging him back inside with a briskness that startles him. Bucky opens his mouth to protest, but there are two other grannies waiting to ambush him right inside the door, and he’s quickly overwhelmed by their well-meaning questions.

“Are you new to the neighborhood, sonny?”

“My, don’t you look like someone famous? Miriam, doesn’t he look like someone on TV –”

“Shifra, you think everyone looks famous.”

“Well, sometimes they _are.”_

“What’s your name, zeisele?”

“I’m Bucky,” Bucky says when he finally manages to get a word in edgewise, blinking. “And I’m – yeah. I’m new.”

“Come to the oneg,” Shifra tells him, patting his cheek with a small, wrinkled hand. “You can sneak off later.” She looks enough like Bucky’s own grandmother that he can’t bring himself to say no. Shifra, Miriam, and a woman who hastily introduces herself as Tova escort him through the sanctuary, past the bimah, down a little hallway, and into a reception room with a long table set up to hold a spread of breakfast fare. Cookies, bagels, a fruit platter – Bucky finds himself seated with a little plate before he can frantically explain that he hasn’t completely decided how he feels about any of this yet, manhandled into a chair at a table that all the little saftas crowd around.

“We don’t get many fresh faces these days,” Tova admits, pushing cream cheese at him. Bucky decides that it’s in his best interest to go along with it and huffs a laugh, spreading cream cheese on half of the bagel.

“I’m not exactly a fresh face, safta,” Bucky says. “And that surprises me, I’d have thought you’d get a lotta new people comin’ to find Hashem after – y’know.” _After the snap,_ he thinks. But that isn’t the kind of thing that he thinks he ought to say out loud to someone who’s nearly as old as he is. They don’t need the reminder.

Shifra clicks her tongue dismissively. “Hashem doesn’t need finding,” she says. “Eat your bagel, Bucky. You’re very thin.”

Fair enough. Bucky hasn’t exactly been eating right since Steve left, and he makes a mental note to check in with Sam about that too, because Sam hasn’t been keeping a regular schedule either. They need to take care of themselves better. Sam doesn’t have a small fleet of grandmas pushing melon at him right now, after all, all he’s got is Bucky and a younger, more confusing version of their best friend.

The grannies chat and ask more questions, which Bucky dodges when he can and answers when he can’t. Miriam coos over Bucky’s accent when he speaks to her in Yiddish, and Tova asks after his family.

Bucky’s face sobers right up. “Don’t have much of that left,” he says, and fiddles with a paper napkin. “Lost the last of it recently. It’s alright,” he adds, because Tova’s face is even more creased with lines now, hearing it. “I’m luckier than most, got a lotta second chances. Can’t complain.” He tries to smile.

Shifra and Miriam just look at him for a long moment, deeply empathetic, and then Tova takes his hand. “Do you want coffee, zeisele?” she asks, kind enough that it hurts.

Bucky can’t really do anything but nod.

 

* * *

 

By the time Bucky makes it back home, it’s about noon. He takes off his jacket and hangs it up, suddenly exhausted, and makes his way to the living room. He promptly flops onto the sofa and kicks off his boots, throwing an arm over his eyes with a deep sigh. He falls asleep like he was knocked on the head.

When he wakes, Steve is sitting in the chair next to the couch with a book in his lap.

“Where’s Sam?” Bucky asks, voice rasping a bit. He rubs the heel of his hand over his eyes.

“He ducked out to see his sister, she doesn’t live too far from here,” Steve explains. He turns down a page corner, dog-earing it, and closes the book carefully. “How was your morning?”

Of course Sam would want to see his family now that things were leveling out a bit, everything much less crazy than it had been. Bucky had forgotten, somewhere in the past century, that some people still have families they love left alive. He stretches, jaw popping as he yawns, and doesn’t know how to answer Steve’s question.

“It was okay,” he says. He figures that’s a fair answer. “How ‘bout you? How’s the future treating you?”

“It’s alright.” Steve can’t quite make his smile look convincing, but Bucky appreciates the effort. “Nothing I can’t handle, anyway. Can I ask you something?”

Bucky already doesn’t like where this conversation is going. “Sure. I’m gonna make coffee, you want some?”

He pushes himself up off the couch and walks to the kitchen, trusting Steve to follow. Steve does, albeit with the same kicked-puppy expression that lingers on his face every time he thinks Bucky isn’t watching him, those big sad blue eyes of his tracking every movement Bucky makes.

“Sure, I’ll take a cup,” Steve says quietly.

Bucky plugs in his stupid little coffee machine and measures out grounds, pours water into the top. ‘Mr. Coffee’ on the front has been taped over with masking tape, red sharpie in Sam’s handwriting correcting it to ‘MRS. JAMES BARNES’ instead in neat all caps. “Okay, I’ll bite,” Bucky says, pressing MRS. JAMES BARNES’ on-button, which has a smiley face sticker cheerfully turned upside down so it frowns. “What’s up?”

“You and Sam,” Steve starts haltingly. Bucky feels his heart sink; he was right to dread this question. “Are you two... going steady?”

“Jeez, Steve,” Bucky says. He turns around, crossing his arms tight over his chest as he leans back against the counter behind himself. “Does it matter?”

“I didn’t even know you like men,” Steve protests.

Bucky thinks about it, briefly, from Steve’s perspective. This Steve’s Bucky died in front of him less than a month ago, and since then, Steve has arrived a hundred years later to a new reality where his best friend is both alive and gay. This would be shocking to anyone.

“I didn’t want you to know,” Bucky says, as gentle as he knows how to be. “I was real scared, back in the day.”

Steve looks absolutely miserable. “So I missed my shot, then.”

Bucky’s heart lurches in his chest. MRS. JAMES BARNES chirps happily behind him, which is nice, because if he keeps looking at Steve, he feels like he might die. So he turns around and gets down two mugs, pouring coffee for the both of them, and adds a little milk to Steve’s, a spoonful of sugar to his own. By the time he turns back around, he’s reasonably sure his face isn’t doing something awful.

“Your timing coulda been better, yeah,” he says, handing Steve his mug. Steve takes it, cradling it between his enormous hands as delicately as he would a bird’s egg.

“And you’re happy?” Steve asks, refusing to meet Bucky’s eyes. “Sam makes you happy, treats you well?”

“Steve, I mean this with all the respect I’ve got, but it ain’t your place to ask those kinds of questions,” Bucky answers, keeping his tone even. He sips at his cup. At some point he’s going to need to find a coping strategy for awkward conversation that isn’t caffeine-related, but at this point, it’s all he’s got. “Look, say you go back to the right point in time. You find the Bucky there, you tell him you’re – you tell him how you feel. I guarantee he won’t turn you down.”

“Do you _want_ me to go?” Steve demands, very pale. “That’s shit, Bucky.”

“Fuck no,” Bucky snaps back. “But I don’t want you to – to stick around feeling sore ‘cause you’re in the wrong time. I lived that one already and I didn’t like it.”

Steve is breathing hard. “How are you so sure he’d say yes, anyway?”

“Because he’s me,” Bucky says. “And darlin’, your window of opportunity was almost a century long.”

Steve closes his mouth with a snap, turning pink with mortification. Bucky doesn't blame him when he flees the room.

 

* * *

 

After sundown, Bucky lights the havdalah candle Sam and Steve bought him and smells the spices, mumbles the prayers under his breath, eats a piece of toast standing over the kitchen sink in lieu of challah. Close enough. It gets the job done.

A bruised part of himself that he didn’t even notice heals as he brushes crumbs off his hands into the sink.

 

* * *

 

When Sam finally comes home from his sister’s, he’s tired and smiling like it’s easy. Bucky listens to him talk about his family, laughing at all the right places, and hangs out on the bed while Sam gets changed into pajamas. A day comprised entirely of religion and yelling at Steve is too much, too raw; it feels good to hear about family drama he has no stake in, and Sam’s voice is very fond, warm and kind. Bucky could wrap himself in that voice for a year and it wouldn’t be enough.

They settle in bed, Bucky curled around Sam like an open parenthesis, his cheek pressed to the nape of Sam’s neck.

“Can I ask you something?” he murmurs, nuzzling against the topmost vertebrae of Sam’s spine. “It’s, uh. Kind of not a good question.”

“Are you trying to give me anxiety?” Sam asks mildly. “Spit it out.”

“Are you in love with him?” Bucky asks.

Sam pauses, his body suddenly very still under the arm Bucky has around his waist. “With Steve?”

"Uh huh."

Sam pauses a moment, then sighs. “Not with the Steve sleepin’ in the guest room,” he admits.

Bucky lets out the breath he’s holding. “Alright,” he says. He holds Sam a little tighter. “I was just wondering.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The small fleet of saftas is based on the grannies at my own shul.


	5. A Shot at Redemption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve swallows hard and continues. “You aren’t anything I can’t handle. Maybe I just like you, is that so hard to believe?”
> 
> Bucky puts his chin in his hand, bent elbow on the table as he regards Steve. “You ain’t ever talked that plain in our whole lives.”
> 
> “Maybe I should’ve,” Steve says, quiet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for this chapter in the end notes.

**CHAPTER FOUR**

_1945_

 

* * *

 

Peggy’s words repeat like a broken record skipping in Steve’s head, and they don’t quiet. 

Whatever mood Bucky was in the night before, he’s feeling better now, putting on his usual brave face and cracking the same jokes as always – if it rings a little false to Steve now, it’s only because he’s hiding something too. Steve keeps an eye on him, because he’s still worried, and because he can’t stop thinking about kissing him. It’s like a switch has been flipped. Now that Peggy’s given him permission to want, Bucky’s mouth is always in Steve’s peripheral vision, curling into a smirk, wrapped around the end of a cigarette.

 _Turns out those are bad for you,_ Steve thinks, and says nothing. _Learned that from a commercial in a different century._

He tries to put it out of his head. Peggy is leaving on a weekend business trip to hash things out with Howard Stark, which she says she can do easier in person, because then she can threaten him with bodily harm. Steve just blinks when she says it – she’s smiling with immense satisfaction – and hands her her stockings when she asks for them.

“Will you take care of what we discussed?” she asks, turning around so Steve can zip up her dress. He pulls it all the way up her back in one smooth motion, taking a minute to bend his head and kiss just over her dress’s neckline.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I will.”

Peggy leaves the room to find her shoes and jacket and also to say goodbye to Bucky, who embraces her briefly. Steve is less surprised than he would have been to see this display of affection, now that he knows what the two of them were whispering about on the war front. He helps Peggy into her jacket and tries very hard not to flush.

“Bring me back a present,” Bucky drawls with a grin, leaning against the doorway.

Peggy reaches up and fixes one of his curls, tucking it back off his forehead. “Are you aiming to be completely spoiled, James?” she asks, amused.

Bucky shrugs, not bothering to deny it. Peggy pats his cheek and steps right out the door, giving a little wave as she walks to her car. Steve and Bucky both wave back. Steve shuts and locks the door, then turns to Bucky. “What d’you wanna do today, pal?”

“I wanna get out of this house,” Bucky complains. “I’m cooped up, Rogers.”

That, Steve can take care of. “Alrighty,” he said, and reaches for his jacket. “Let’s get out of here then, Buck.”

 

* * *

 

The rest of the Commandos meet them at a bar across town for lunch and drinks – they’ve visited a handful of times since Bucky’s rescue, all of them suspiciously polite and well-mannered around Peggy until she says something graphically inappropriate and they remember she’s one of them again. They tease and poke at Bucky until he cracks a smile, even when he’s at his most hollow-eyed, and Steve is very grateful for this. They’re good at yanking Bucky bodily into a good mood, laughing, raucous; it makes Steve grin, how much they love him.

Makes his cheeks hurt from smiling, honestly. He never even really allowed himself to miss them when he was in the future. It aches to be near them now. 

“Awful long face there, Cap,” Dugan tells him, shoving a beer across the table at him. “Missing Carter that bad already?”

“She leaves for two hours and he’s a wreck,” Bucky sighs. “You gonna eat that?”

Morita wordlessly slides his half-finished sandwich toward Bucky. They’re all worried about him, even if they don’t mention his pinned-up left sleeve, aside from an off-color joke from Dum Dum about Steve cutting up his food for him that makes Bucky kick him under the table. Steve lets it be. At least Bucky is eating.

He thinks, briefly, about the other Bucky. The one in the future. How many times had Steve ended up hand-feeding him bites of whatever when he visited him in Wakanda, just to be sure that Bucky ate? It had felt like when they were children, in a weird, distorted-reflection kind of way; Bucky with his head pillowed on Steve’s thigh, Steve with a bunch of grapes in hand, occasionally dropping one into Bucky’s waiting mouth. Bucky’s eyes had glittered, then, and Steve hadn’t known what it _meant,_ but he thinks he does now. Now that Peggy pointed it out to him. It used to be him needing looking after, he remembers.

It’s nice to see Bucky eating the sandwich he stole from Morita in a way that is both messy and uncomplicated.

“You really are moping,” Falsworth says, shaking his head slightly. “It’s a weekend trip, is it not? Surely you can suffer through.”

“I’m not _moping,”_ Steve tries, not for the first time. “I never mope, I have no idea where you guys are getting that from.”

Bucky snorts. “You’re full’a shit,” he tells him, mouth full.

“Profound words from our Sarge,” Gabe says sagely, tapping the side of his nose.

Steve tosses his hands in the air, gives in. The table erupts into laughter, but Steve is looking at Bucky, who sinks into his seat a little even as he laughs. Bucky pushes his plate away from himself while everyone is talking again, eyes shuttered, and something clicks into place in the center of Steve’s chest. The Commandos may have written a hundred extra verses to _The Star Spangled Man with a Plan_ over the course of the war, all of them either dirty or mocking, but one thing they never changed:

Steve is still iron resolve no matter what he’s resolved about, and the twisted-up smile on Bucky’s face makes Steves’ determination cement inside him.

“I’ll buy you all another round before Buck and I go home,” Steve announces, nudging Bucky’s boot under the table. 

“That’s our Cap,” Dum Dum says, clapping Steve’s shoulder before belching loudly. 

Steve ducks his head to hide his smile. He really did miss them.

 

* * *

 

The walk home is quiet, but then, Steve supposes he and Bucky both have a lot on their minds. He keeps his hands in his pockets, watching Bucky out of the corner of his eye, planning his next move. He’s never been good at this. Peggy makes it easy, she’s always made every first move. Steve doesn’t know what he could do that would make Bucky lean into his side and kiss him, so – Steve has to do the leaning.

He slings an arm around Bucky’s shoulders, tugging him in. Bucky stiffens right up, casting a sidelong glance in Steve’s direction, but he doesn’t fight it or complain. He doesn’t actually say anything at all, letting himself get tucked up against Steve’s side, and it’s exactly the way they used to walk as kids, in the inverse. Bucky used to drape his arm over Steve’s skinny shoulders all the time, with his million-dollar smile and bright eyes, as if he was showing Steve off to the whole world. It feels good to do this for him now. Bucky is solid and familiar beneath Steve’s arm.

“It was good to see the guys,” Steve says. His hand is draped over Bucky’s arm, thumb flirting with a fold in his jacket. The absence of Bucky’s left arm means that his side is pressed to Steve’s side, drawn all the way in.

“They’re being way too sweet,” Bucky mutters. “It’s how they were right after Azzano, too, breaking out the kid gloves again.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that, honestly. Before the war, Bucky’s friends were people he worked with, whatever rough-and-tumble pals at the docks would go drinking with him after a long shift. None of them, as far as Steve knows, have stayed in touch. The Commandos are different, they’re family, and they know Bucky too well to handle him roughly. Who could bear to, after everything?

“Can you blame ‘em for being worried?” Steve asks, shaking Bucky a little. “Let ‘em fuss over you for a while, at least for their benefit. They’ll get over it.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “You talkin’ about yourself, there, Rogers?”

“No,” Steve admits. “I’m never gonna get over it.”

They’ve reached Peggy’s apartment, so they have to extricate themselves so one of them can grab a key. Steve immediately misses the warmth of Bucky’s body next to his own as Bucky fishes his key out of his pocket and lets them in.

“Figures,” Bucky says, resigned. “You ain’t ever let go of anything in your life.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Steve asks, trying to decide if he’s offended or not. He kicks off his shoes, then takes off his jacket. 

Bucky shoots him a withering look. “Means you’re stubborn and annoying.”

“You’re one to talk. Want some help with that jacket?” Steve asks.

Bucky is halfway out of it, but it’s trickier than it looks to finish the job one-handed. His lip curls. “You gonna take my shoes off for me now, too?” he growls, finally managing to free himself. His jacket falls to the ground, puddling, and he flushes when he has to bend down and retrieve it.

“I would,” Steve says softly. “If you let me.”

“Christ.” Bucky puts his coat on the hook, then beats a hasty retreat. “I’m going for a bath.”

“Come back in time for dinner,” Steve calls out to him. “I’m taking you out again.”

Bucky’s wordless grunt of acknowledgement isn’t the enthusiasm Steve was hoping for, but since he hasn’t told him yet it’s meant to be a date, he really has no cause to feel disappointed.

 

* * *

 

Since Bucky’s baths are usually long and involved affairs, Steve settles in with a book and the radio and tries to keep himself occupied. He gets five pages in before he has to shut off the music, putting his face in his hands. 

He misses the playlists Sam used to make him. The future had enough musical innovation to overwhelm anybody, but Sam’s picks were always old-school enough to make sense to Steve while still being fresh and exciting. He misses that. Misses being on the road with Sam, even if it was on the run, Sam crooning lyrics real soft or crowing them victoriously with the windows rolled down. The setting sunlight would turn Sam’s skin copper-brown, rich and mysterious with possibility, and Steve had thought – things he should not have thought. He doesn’t want to think of them now. He knew the bargain he was making, coming back to the past, and he knew what he would be giving up. There’s no cause to feel sore about it now.

He does, anyway. He sits there with a silent radio and his book in his hands, feeling sorry for himself, even though this whole damn thing is his stupid idea. It’s worth it, he thinks. It has to be. 

Down the hall, Bucky is singing to himself with water splashing in the background as counterpoint. Steve wishes he could throw himself into that bath, clothes and all, he doesn’t care, and clutch at Bucky until he’s himself again. He hasn’t been himself since 1945 – the first 1945, that is, the first time around – and he misses being that Steve to this Bucky. He wants it again so badly he can feel the ache in his _teeth,_ in his joints, in every soft vulnerable place that exists on his body.

The resolve that hardened inside him during lunch has only sharpened further. If Peggy is right (and Peggy is very nearly always right), then all he has to do is put his arms out, and Bucky will sink right into them. He hopes he will. He doesn’t really know what he’ll do if he doesn’t, now that he’s allowed himself to start wanting it openly.

He opens his book and turns on the radio again. He flips it to a different station to hopefully chase the rest of the loud, confusing thoughts out of his head while he waits for Bucky to be through with his bath.

 

* * *

 

By the time they’re at dinner, Steve is a mess of nerves. He’s certain Bucky notices, because how couldn’t he? He knows Steve too well not to, and Steve is all but vibrating with energy, buzzing with the knowledge of what he’s going to do as soon as they go home. Bucky narrows his eyes at him over the table. Steve smiles at him every time they make eye contact.

“Okay, you’re acting weird,” Bucky announces, pushing his potatoes around on his plate. “What’s goin’ on?”

“Nothing’s goin’ on,” Steve answers automatically. It’s a lie, but he doesn’t want to cop to it yet. “Just glad to be getting dinner with my best guy.” He grins.

Bucky’s eyes narrow further, somehow. “Did you fuck up somehow?” he demands. “Is this an apology?”

 _Not yet,_ Steve thinks, wincing. “Eat your dinner,” he says, kicking Bucky’s foot under the table. “Sometimes a nice steak is just a nice steak.”

Bucky obviously doesn’t believe him, still, but Steve lets it be. Bucky is busy stabbing his meat, struggling with the knife, and his shoulders grow more and more tense with frustration until Steve reaches across the table and puts his hands over Bucky’s hand. 

“Hey,” Steve says. “Dum Dum’s crack really got to you, huh?”

Bucky’s jaw clenched and unclenched. “Love the guy. Didn’t love that.”

“Let me,” Steve says.

“I’m not a fucking invalid,” Bucky hisses, the sound of it a violent kind of quiet.

Steve sighs. “Remember when it used to be me on the other side of that argument, Buck?”

Bucky looks at his plate, fist clenched tight around his knife. He slowly puts it down as Steve watches his drive to keep being stubborn flickers out. “Fine,” he says. 

Steve cuts up his steak for him. He doesn’t allow a lick of pity to cross his face, just mild interest, and puts down the cutlery again near Bucky when he’s through. He keeps silent, even though there are many things he wants to say to him now. But he can’t very well tell him that a different, older version of himself was functionally ambidextrous by the time Steve knew him; can’t tell him about being mesmerized watching him flip a pocket knife from hand to hand in complicated passes.

He drinks his water, turning his attention onto his own food. After a beat, Bucky starts to eat his steak.

“There’s that bedside manner again,” Bucky mutters eventually. “Seriously, Steve. I’m not exactly a joy to be around these days, and I know it. Dunno where this chipper goddamn attitude of yours is comin’ from.”

 _Buck, you got no idea about attitude,_ Steve doesn’t say. _Not that any of it was ever your fault._

“Well.” Steve clears his throat. “I thought you were dead, for starters.” Bucky looks up at him, pained. Steve swallows hard and continues. “You aren’t anything I can’t handle. Maybe I just like you, is that so hard to believe?”

Bucky puts his chin in his hand, bent elbow on the table as he regards Steve. “You ain’t ever talked that plain in our whole lives.”

“Maybe I should’ve,” Steve says, quiet. 

Bucky’s mouth goes very soft, lips half-parted, and Steve ducks his head to focus on his plate for a bit. He can feel the blush creeping down his throat, and he tries to pay it no mind, but he knows the color it’ll turn him. There’s no use trying to hide from Bucky, though. After a long moment, Bucky’s foot comes to rest against Steve’s, their ankles knocking together.

“I think I like you all earnest,” he tells him, an olive branch.

Steve looks up, smiling. He’ll take it. “Enjoy it while it lasts, pal.”

Bucky shakes his head, expression warm but unreadable.

 

* * *

 

This walk back home is as quiet as the last one, but Bucky leans into Steve’s side without preamble this time, and Steve wraps an arm around him gladly. Bucky fits just right, pressed against his side, and Steve appreciates the opportunity to hold him almost as close as he wants. He squeezes Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky leans into him more firmly.

It’s Steve who opens the door this time. He holds it for Bucky, hand on the small of his back as he passes through the door frame, and kicks it closed behind them. It feels only natural to follow where Bucky leads.

This turns out to be Bucky’s bedroom, where Bucky pauses, looking at Steve with that same complicated something on his face.

“What are you after, here?” he asks, more bleak than suspicious now. “And don’t bullshit me.”

Steve frowns. “I’m not going to bullshit you, Buck.”

“Then quit being so confusing,” Bucky says. His hand is clenched tight at his side.

“Is it really all that unclear?” Steve asks. He takes a step forward, closer to Bucky. He puts his hand on the lapel of Bucky’s jacket, where his fingers curl automatically around it. “What I’m after, I mean. Lemme take this for you.”

Bucky helps Steve slide the jacket off his shoulders. Steve walks to Bucky’s closet, where he hangs it up neatly on its hanger.

“But – Peggy –” Bucky tries.

“Gave her blessing,” Steve interrupts. “Those suspenders must be uncomfortable after all day in ‘em.”

Bucky blinks. Then he nods his agreement jerkily, which Steve takes as all the permission he needs to slide Bucky's suspenders off his shoulders, then reach around to the small of his back to unfasten them from his pants. Bucky, Steve notices, is hardly breathing as Steve’s hand covers his hip. Steve draws back only to toss Bucky’s suspenders over the back of his desk chair.

“Gimme a hand with my shirt?” Bucky rasps.

Bucky’s eyes are so blue, even obscured by the blurry haze of his eyelashes as he glances down. Steve undoes the top button, then the next, then the next, trying hard not to let his hands shake as he untucks the tails of the shirt so he can unbutton it all the way down. Bucky is breathing harder by the time Steve pushes it off his shoulders, and if he’s being honest, Steve is too. He stalls out, blinking, looking at Bucky’s bare chest in the fading light. He’s all lithe muscle and smooth skin, although they’re eating well enough these days that there’s a little softness around his middle that they were never afforded as children or on the battlefield. Steve loves him like this so fiercely it takes him by surprise. He licks his lips. The knots of scar tissue on Bucky’s body do nothing to detract from how lovely he is.

“You said something about my shoes, earlier,” Bucky prompts, shoulders tightening a little under Steve’s gaze. 

“I did, didn’t I,” Steve says. He’s grateful for the direction. “Sit on the bed and I’ll make good on that promise.”

Bucky hops up onto the bed, feigning like this is something he’s done a thousand times before, easy as anything. Steve knows better. He lived with him, after all; Bucky’s gone steady with two girls total in his lifetime, and neither of them for longer than three months. He’s always been more preoccupied with working and coming home to Steve than making time with anyone after dances. Even if he’s always been horribly good at dancing.

Steve is struck by a thought that gives him pause as he kneels in front of him. Has Bucky ever done this with other men? If he has, how many times? Steve knows about all the girls because that’s a socially acceptable thing to talk about with one’s best friend, but if Bucky ever fooled around with a guy, there’s no reason to think he’d have told Steve.

Not that Steve has any room to talk. He didn’t tell the Bucky he found in the 21st century that he likes men, even after many private opportunities to do it without an audience. It never seemed like the right time, and what did it matter, anyway, since it had all been hypothetical then? He doesn’t know what that Bucky would have done if he’d known. He’s afraid, now, to think.

He swallows, carefully unlacing Bucky’s shoes. He takes them off, one after the other, and sets them down side by side at the base of Bucky’s bed. He glances up – Bucky’s eyes are very dark now, mostly pupil, and his lips just barely part when Steve rubs his thumb over the ball of his ankle.

“You’re beautiful,” Steve blurts out. 

Bucky’s lips curl into something like a smirk. Steve knows that smile – he’s missed that smile dearly. The way it makes Bucky’s whole face go all private and knowing, like he and Steve are sharing the best inside joke in the world. Steve hasn’t seen that smile in long enough that he forgot what it does to him.

“Still got it, huh,” Bucky says, knees spreading a little, showing off. “You got a plan there, pal?”

“I get on my knees for you and I’m still ‘pal’?” Steve asks, amused.

Bucky doesn’t look fazed whatsoever. “Until you do somethin’ down there to make me change my vocabulary, yeah.”

Well. With an invitation like that. Steve sits up on his knees, both hands finding places on Bucky’s thighs, and he leans in close so he can nuzzle Bucky’s hip. It’s immensely gratifying to hear Bucky’s breath catch. 

It strikes him as he undoes Bucky’s belt that it can’t be horribly comfortable for Bucky to sit like that, propped up with only his one hand bearing his weight. He doesn’t want to mention it, suspecting it would kill the mood if he draws attention to the strain on Bucky’s shoulder, so he just thoughtfully pulls Bucky’s belt free and snakes it out of his belt loops. He leaves it coiled next to Bucky’s shoes, then undoes Bucky’s trousers and doesn’t allow himself to hesitate before he works them down Bucky’s hips and frees his legs. He stands, folding the trousers, and puts them with Bucky’s shirt.

“Go sit up against the pillows,” Steve tells him. “Then I’ll work on changing your vocabulary.”

If Bucky knows what Steve’s doing, bypassing the need for him to ask for a more comfortable position, he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t fight it either, sliding up the bed to lean against the pillows in a sprawl that makes Steve want to unearth his sketchbook for the first time in twelve years.

“Jesus, look at you,” Steve breathes. 

Bucky laughs. “Pretty sure Jesus didn’t have much to do with this one, doll.”

Steve snorts, conceding the point. He can’t focus on banter with Bucky calling him things like _doll,_ anyway, and decides that he’s better off crawling onto the bed with him and giving Bucky what he wants. It doesn’t escape his notice that he’s still fully dressed, but that doesn’t matter much, not yet. One thing at a time.

“What do you want?” he asks, one knee on either side of Bucky’s leg. His hand smooths up Bucky’s hip, his side, fingertips stroking over the crinkly dark hair that leads from Bucky’s navel to the waistband of his underwear. 

Bucky swallows hard enough it looks like it hurts. “I... what’s on the table, here?”

“Anything.” Steve means it more than he’s meant anything in a long time. Whatever Bucky wants, he’ll get it. It’s that simple. “Anything, Buck, just tell me so I can do it to you.”

“Fuck,” Bucky says, eyes going wide.

“That’s the idea,” Steve agrees, and flattens his palm on the lower part of Bucky’s abdomen so when he pets down even lower Bucky will get his whole hand on the bulge in his shorts. Bucky throws his head back and keens softly when Steve gives his dick a squeeze through the fabric, which makes a rush of arousal shiver through Steve so fast it leaves him dizzy, buzzing beneath his skin like his blood has turned to champagne.

“D’you want my hand, like this?” Steve asks. He rubs Bucky some more, smiling when Bucky’s hips start trying to rock against the cup of his palm. “Or my mouth, how about that?”

“You gotta stop talking like that,” Bucky gasps. “You’re fucking killing me.”

Steve is lucky that Bucky’s eyes are squeezed closed, because otherwise he would watch a rather horrendous blush bloom all the way down Steve’s throat. “Kinda the idea,” he murmurs, and slides his hand into Bucky’s underwear. “If I keep talking to you like this, touching you like this, are you gonna go off in a minute?”

“Yeah,” Bucky admits hoarsely, honest as hell.

“Good,” Steve says, and bends to kiss him.

It really doesn’t take long for Bucky to start to tense up under Steve’s attentions, making these sweet, pathetic little noises as Steve strokes him firmly. Steve murmurs the dirtiest things he's ever said into his ear, made confident by Bucky’s earnest reactions. It feels so good to do this for him. Bucky is hot and iron-hard in his hand, squirming when Steve twists his wrist just right.

“Come on,” Steve whispers. He bites the edge of Bucky’s jaw. “Come on, I wanna see it.”

Bucky’s breathing goes heavy and ragged, his arm slung around Steve’s neck and his hand tight on Steve’s shoulder while he shakes himself to pieces. It only takes a couple more strokes before Steve gets to watch him lose it, pretty blue eyes screwed up, mouth hanging open while he comes.

Steve subtly wipes his messy hand on the sheets while Bucky comes down from it. 

“I love you, you know,” Steve says.

Bucky gazes at him through half-lidded eyes. “Take your goddamn clothes off right now, Steve.”

Steve nearly falls off the bed, that’s how fast he hastens to obey.

 

* * *

 

The streetlight outside washes the whole room orange between the shadows. The slope of Bucky’s back is a perfect crescent beneath Steve’s hand, his whole body boneless and satisfied in a way that makes Steve feel proud of himself for getting him there.

“You look so tired, honey,” Bucky murmurs, stroking his thumb over Steve’s cheek over and over. He appears about as young as he really is with his hair in a mess on his pillow, half his body draped over Steve’s. His fingertips touch the corner of Steve’s eye. “You’ve looked tired for a while. Since when do you have crow’s feet, huh?”

 _No,_ Steve thinks. _No, Buck, I don’t look tired. I look old._

“Still catching my sea legs, I guess,” he says instead. “Don’t know what to do without a war.”

Bucky yawns hugely. “You’ll do what’cha always do,” he says, shoving his face into the crook of Steve’s neck. “Find another war. Don’t worry.”

But Steve is worried that he’ll do exactly that.

 

* * *

 

In Steve’s dreams, he’s kissing the other Bucky, the older one. This Bucky clenches his metal fingers around a fistful of Steve’s shirt, shoving him up against the wall, and chokes on a groan that’s as low and rough as all the other noises he makes when Steve tugs on his handful of long dark hair.

“I love you,” Bucky pants against his lips. “I _love_ you.”

And in the dream, it doesn’t matter that Bucky doesn’t really remember Steve all the way, it doesn’t matter that they’re constantly half a step out of sync with each other. Steve gasps out that he loves him too, he always has, and Bucky smiles blindingly bright. It’s at odds on his stubbled face, because Steve hasn’t seen this Bucky smile like that maybe ever. Especially not at him.

“I know,” Bucky says, breathless. “I know because you always come back to me.”

In the dream, this is true, but Steve still feels guilty.

 

* * *

 

Steve’s eyes snap open. His heart is racing a mile a minute.

Glancing at the clock next to the bed shows that it’s two hours after he and Bucky fell asleep tangled up together. He rubs a hand over his eyes, the guilt from his dream bleeding into him now. Bucky is a dead weight on him, breathing deeply, it puffs against the curve of Steve’s neck every time he exhales.

What is Bucky doing in the 21st century right now? Steve’s brain can’t think of anything else in this moment. The older Bucky’s got Sam and the rest of the team, and he said he’d be alright when Steve told him his plans, but even with this other Bucky in his arms, Steve is worrying about him. He’ll never stop worrying about him. He’ll never stop wishing things had gone differently between them, that they’d been able to find a semblance of normal amidst the chaos.

There isn’t any chaos now. The Bucky that’s in his arms is fast asleep, drooling a little on Steve’s shoulder, and he can’t help but imagine what it would be like if it were the other Bucky in his place. Long hair in a tangle across Steve’s neck, cool left hand resting across Steve’s ribs.

Steve closes his eyes hard enough that he sees faint sunbursts.

He gently extricates himself from Bucky, who makes an unhappy noise but doesn’t stir. Steve retrieves his underwear from where he lobbed them at the foot of the bed and puts them on, then creeps out of Bucky’s bedroom to walk down the hall. He feels a little frisson of something that isn’t quite shame and isn’t quite anything else as he steps into his and Peggy’s bedroom, going directly to the closet where his briefcase is stowed.

He just – he needs to reassure himself, quickly, that Bucky is alright. The other Bucky. _My Bucky,_ he thinks, even though the Bucky in question hasn’t been his since he came back from the dead, no matter how doggedly Steve chased him. 

Steve takes the briefcase down from the top shelf where Peggy’s hat boxes are stacked, laying it on the mattress and unlocking it with the soft sound of metal clasps popping open. The second to last stone to return, the tesseract, spills blue light all over the bedspread in a way that Steve finds fairly ominous. It isn’t ominous enough to stop him any, though. He presses a button on the side of the case, cool air washing over him as the tesseract hums.

The portal he calls up with it is only a window, not a doorway – he can look through, but it won’t disrupt the future at all. He finds Bucky, who looks like he’s making coffee, hair tied up in a bun. _I know what the nape of his neck tastes like,_ Steve thinks, brow creasing.

 _“Okay, I’ll bite,”_ Bucky says. _“What’s up?”_

 _“You and Sam, are you two going steady?”_ a voice Steve only halfway recognizes asks. The hair all the way down Steve’s arms rises as the back of a blond head comes into view. Sam and Bucky? Going _steady?_  

Then the blond guy turns his head enough to see his face and Steve nearly swallows his own tongue. He’s – and Bucky is – but that’s not –

Steve’s head hurts with how badly the veins at his temples are throbbing, the roar of his pulse drowning out everything else for a couple long, excruciating seconds.

 _“How are you so sure he’d say yes, anyway?”_ the other Steve is demanding when Steve can hear again, his upset voice sounding like his stomach is being weighed down by a sack of stones.

 _“Because he’s me,”_ Bucky says very tiredly. There are dark circles under his eyes and a gauntness hanging about him that Steve has to admit he did not miss. Metal fingers curl tight around a handful of the granite countertop, whole body one long line of tension that screams to back off. _“And darlin’, your window of opportunity was almost a century long.”_

Steve turns the portal off so fast his head spins. But that might just be from the echo of what he heard.

There’s another Steve in the future, another Steve who’s found that Bucky. In this version, Bucky and Sam are together and the other Steve, who looks so _young,_ is shit out of luck. Where the hell did he come from? Last time Steve looked so young was –

 _In the ice,_ Steve realizes like he’s been smacked upside the head. Of course. There’s another version of him in the Atlantic right now, in the ‘40s, just the same as the younger Bucky he’s been living with echoes the one in 2024. Or at least there _was_ a version of himself in the ice, but the Steve in Bucky’s apartment looks an awful lot like the one meant to be in the Atlantic. 

Bucky is making deep, longing eyes at that young Steve. The one who Bucky turned down because he’s in love with Sam now.

“I fucked up,” Steve breathes out loud faintly. The words taste like ashes on his lips, the comprehension of how much dawning on him slowly. “Oh, I fucked up. I fucked _up.”_

The tesseract somehow manages not to fall out of the briefcase when it drops from Steve’s numb fingers onto the carpet, avoiding burning a hole straight down through the floor. But Steve feels the acid burn all the way through his chest instead, like it’s his body that the cube sank through, leaving a hole with smoking edges right through his sternum.

“Steve?” Bucky’s sleepy voice inquires behind him. Steve whirls around. “What’re you doin’ up?”

“Nothing,” Steve says automatically, and leaps to pick up the briefcase, snapping it closed. “Go back to bed, Buck, I’ll be there in a second.”

“Is that the fucking tesseract?” Bucky demands, suddenly very awake, and Steve feels hot shame blister all the way from his cheeks to his chest.

 _I fucked up,_ he thinks, and when he opens his mouth to explain, he chokes on it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief, barely-there mentions of disordered eating in this chapter - there will never be anything particularly explicit or upsetting on this topic in this story, but I thought it best to warn just in case :)


	6. Incidents and Accidents, Hints and Allegations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky opens his eyes again to see not one, but two very worried Steves looking down at him. Someone laid him out on the couch, his head propped up on a pillow, and the older Steve is holding his metal hand clasped between his own. He lets go as soon as Bucky’s awake, though.
> 
> “How are you feeling?” the older Steve asks, grave and earnest.
> 
> “Am I hungover, or are there two of you?” Bucky rasps.

**CHAPTER FIVE**

_1945_

 

* * *

 

Steve sits on the couch where Bucky put him. The briefcase is on the coffee table, propped open, emitting the same blue glow it has from the beginning. The tesseract ripples every now and then, and Steve watches it, hands clasped in his lap. Peggy is on her way home early after a phone call from Bucky. Bucky isn’t speaking to Steve, and hasn’t since he found him in his and Peggy’s bedroom.

Steve, for his part, has been trying not to throw up for a couple hours now.

Bucky is clattering around the kitchen, making coffee, and this is the part where Steve would offer to help, but he thinks it’s probably best for him to keep his distance at this point. He listens to the sound of Bucky moving around in the next room over. Water running, Bucky’s hand slapping the counter top once, hard. Steve bows his head so he’s certain they won’t make eye contact through the doorway. The tesseract ripples again. 

Whatever Peggy will say when she comes home, Steve has no idea. If she’ll be at all sympathetic or if she’ll tense right the hell up like Bucky has, whole body one long line of do-not-fuck-with, he can’t guess. Steve glances over the back of the couch at him again, watching the line of his hip that he can see through the doorway. He put his mouth to that soft skin just three hours ago; now it feels like a much longer time ago, with all his secrets out.

Well, his secrets aren’t out, necessarily. Bucky hasn’t asked many questions yet. But the two of them are both very aware of how much information has been buried in the gutter between them, now. Steve wrings his hands very slowly, left over right, then right after left. The briefcase sits and glows.

Steve wants to jump up and fix this, somehow, but he knows he can’t until Peggy gets home. And even then, what will he be able to do? His actions have already spoken for themselves in ways Steve wishes they hadn’t. Yes, he’s been keeping the tesseract in their home, and the soul stone as well, although neither Bucky nor Peggy know what that is or what it means that Steve has it. He hasn’t had the heart to return it yet. Feels like he’s going to be sick when he imagines seeing what Natasha went through firsthand, since it was hard enough just to rematerialize on the platform and see her spot empty.

He studiously tries not to think about Bucky seeing that very thing happen when Steve himself decided to stay in the past.

The sound of the key in the front door makes Steve’s heart drop to his shoes. He looks up as Peggy walks in, her red-painted lips pursed into a thin line. Steve wants to sink into the damn floor.

“James,” Peggy says, stepping to the kitchen. She ignores Steve entirely.

Steve watches the two of them have a mostly-silent conversation, heads close together. He does his best to disappear into the sofa, arms crossed tightly across his stomach, and breathes. Or at least tries to. 

“Alright,” Bucky announces behind him, and Steve turns his head, looking up at him. Bucky seems about as terse as Peggy does, which isn’t promising, but he also doesn’t look as hopping mad as he did an hour ago. Steve is willing to take the little victories. “You have some talking to do, pal.”

“It’s a long story,” Steve says, voice small.

“We have time, darling,” Peggy replies flatly.

She and Bucky seat themselves in the chairs opposite the couch, the briefcase with the tesseract on the coffee table between them and Steve. Steve feels, nonsensically, that he is being confronted by two parents for the first time since his father died.

“Okay,” he says, tongue darting out to wet his lips, and begins to talk. The light of the tesseract casts ghosts upon both Bucky and Peggy’s faces.

 

* * *

 

_2024_

 

* * *

 

Bucky wakes up next to Sam. This isn’t unusual anymore, and that thought alone makes him smile. He blinks his eyes open and watches the morning sunshine fall over Sam’s body gently, lighting him up, leaving his edges gilt. Bucky props himself up on an elbow, looking at him. He thinks, for maybe the first time – _I love him._ It’s a good thought. A warm one. Kind. 

A lot warmer and kinder than most of his thoughts are, these days. He bends to brush his lips over Sam’s shoulder blade and squeezes his eyes closed, taking a second to be grateful for never having to worry about someone bleeding the memories out of his head again. He is grateful for this often, but this is a new memory that he isn’t willing to lose. It feels different now.

Sam shifts, mumbling, and Bucky rubs his cheek against his shoulder. “Just me. Sleep,” he murmurs. Sam resettles with a sigh.

It doesn’t really matter if Sam feels the same, right now. In this moment, it’s enough for Bucky to know that this is a bed he won’t get kicked out of, that Sam will care for him and look after him and allow himself to be fussed over in return. Bucky is useless without someone to fuss over, he always has been; it’s not his prettiest trait, but he isn’t particularly ashamed of it either. Sam likes him, respects him, trusts him, even. Both in the field and in his bed. This is enough.

Bucky slips out of bed like a ghost and disappears down the hall toward the kitchen. He’ll make coffee, and eggs for Sam and Steve when they wake, and he will learn to love whatever new normal he’s got. He’ll have to apologize to Steve for his outburst the night before, but he suspects that Steve will be able to find it in his heart to forgive him. All in all, Bucky has a good feeling about this morning. He walks into the kitchen feeling good.

Steve is at the kitchen table, what few things he’s amassed in the future packed up at his feet. He’s wearing the older Steve’s leather jacket, the one Bucky put in the closet to hang onto. He looks deathly grim. Bucky no longer feels good about this morning.

“You’re leaving,” Bucky realizes, heart sinking.

Steve’s jaw clenches and unclenches visibly. “I’m not gonna stick around making you miserable,” he says, looking pretty miserable himself. “You were right, Buck. My window of opportunity closed.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Bucky says. Not like this. He didn’t want this.

“You’re alive,” Steve says. “That means you were alive the whole time. If I go back to 2012, I can find you then.”

Bucky has had this thought as well, even if makes him feel vaguely ill. “It’s possible, yeah,” he agrees, and sits at the table across from Steve. “But there’s no guarantee he won’t kill you when you find him. He ain’t right in the head, pal, and I’d know.”

Steve shrugs. “I’m not right in the head either. You seem pretty alright.”

“This is after a good five years of working through shit,” Bucky warns him seriously. “It wasn’t pretty at the start.”

One corner of Steve’s mouth lifts. “Hard to believe you ever weren’t pretty.”

Bucky’s mouth drops open. He shuts it with a snap, flushing, and looks away. “Save your charm for another Bucky,” he mutters.

“It’s all the same Bucky to me,” Steve replies, and Bucky looks at him, hurting. That’s the real difference between this Steve and the Steve he knows; the older, sadder Steve understands that Bucky is a completely different man now than the one who fell off the train. Maybe this knowledge is what made him leave. Bucky doesn’t want to dwell on it.

“Where are you gonna get Pym particles from, anyway?” Bucky asks eventually, leaning back in his chair with a sigh.

“Fury. He just seems glad I’m going where I’m supposed to go in the time stream.” Steve shrugs, uncomfortable.

Bucky’s eyes narrow. The number of things Nick Fury doesn’t feel obligated to tell him would fill a damn swimming pool. “We still don’t know how you ended up here, you know,” he points out. “You really wanna leave before we iron that out?”

Steve chews on his lower lip. “Is the why more important than fixing what got fucked up?”

Bucky puts his face in his hands. “I kinda feel like it is, pal.”

Steve is looking down at his feet when Bucky peeks at him through his fingers. Fuck. “Look,” Bucky tries, raking his hands through his hair. “If all the greatest scientific minds of this generation wanna chalk this up to time travel weirdness and call it a day, okay. Fine. Whatever. But it feels awful convenient that you showed up right when the other Steve left.”

Steve looks at him, frowning. “What do you mean?”

“I think we know fuck-all about how time travel really works,” Bucky says. “And what happened to you to get you here has gotta have something to do with the other guy.”

This isn’t a thought he’s articulated before. He’s been ghosting around it ever since this new, young Steve materialized in New York, but he hasn’t allowed himself to really think it. Fury says that they found traces of Pym particles on this Steve’s body, and how the fuck else would that happen if the other Steve hadn’t been involved?

“Please stay,” Bucky says, with a slight waver in his voice. “Until we figure this out.”

Steve looks conflicted, even pained. “Buck, last night you basically _told_ me to go.”

“I changed my mind,” Bucky says, and he knows that isn’t fair, but it’s what he’s got.

Steve breathes in, then out. He nods sharply.

Bucky supposes that’s that.

 

* * *

 

_1945_

 

* * *

 

After Steve is through explaining, Bucky’s mouth is hanging open and Peggy is very pale. Steve is horrifically ashamed. He doesn’t ever think he’s been this ashamed in his life, looking at the tesseract in front of him, looking his own past in the eye when he glances up at the people sitting across from him. 

“I should never have come here,” he says, eyes burning with tears that he desperately does not want to shed. “Or – I shoulda come to put the tesseract back, but I shouldn’t have stayed. I’m sorry.”

Bucky is looking at him like he doesn’t know who the hell he’s looking at. Steve doesn’t blame him. Steve came back here, trying to fill the shoes he’d left behind, but he’s been living on stolen time and he knows it; the lies have stacked up, and Steve slept with _both_ of them, and – he wouldn’t forgive himself, if he were in their place.

He just wanted to come home. He still wants to, but he knows that home isn’t here, now. He should never have thought it would be in the first place. His whole life he’s been running, and he always thought he was running _toward_ something _,_ but now that he’s run as far as he can go, it’s clear that he’s done nothing but run away. Away from his pain, away from the consequences of his hurting, and now away from the only two men who would possibly understand it. Or him.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. He swallows and tastes salt.

Peggy puts her hand out, leaning across the coffee table so she can rest it very gently on top of Steve’s. “The past twelve years haven’t been kind to you, darling,” she says, voice soft.

Steve shakes his head woodenly. They really haven’t.

“When you said you got picked up by a fishing boat after the Valkyrie,” Bucky says. “That was bullshit, then.”

Steve carefully doesn’t move his hand, in case that would make Peggy withdraw. “That’s right.”

“So there’s another you in the ocean right now? You were just gonna _leave_ him there?” Bucky demands, and Steve’s gut wrenches.

“Bucky, that’s how I made it to the future,” he says, voice breaking. “I was frozen for sixty-seven years, and then I woke up. I didn’t want to mess with that. I already changed too much just by coming back.”

Bucky looks unhappy, but he still nods.

“I already fucked up too much,” Steve says, again, and looks down at his hands. Drops of tears splash on the heel of his thumb, on his shirt cuff. “I fucked up so much.”

“Hell, Rogers,” Bucky says, but all the fight has drained out of him, Steve can hear it. Bucky stands, rounding the table, and sits down next to Steve close enough for their knees to touch. He puts his arm around him, pulling him in, and lets Steve put his head on his shoulder – and when Steve bursts into tears, shoulders shaking, Bucky just holds him tighter and sighs.

“I’m sorry,” Steve sobs. “I’m sorry, I just missed you both so _bad.”_

“Didn’t you find me?” Bucky says, bewildered. “Honey, you said we were both there in the future.”

“But it wasn’t _good,”_ Steve cries. “I just wanted it to be _good,_ but I don’t think you even like me anymore, you spent – _fuck,_ half the time you were running away from me, and the other half we were at war, God, Buck...” 

Which isn’t fair, precisely, because Steve didn’t exactly stick around long enough to find out what he and the other Bucky would be when there isn’t a war anymore. But it’s the principle of the thing. He’s just so tired of fighting. And tired of hurting or alienating the other Bucky in the process.

“Hey, hey,” Bucky says tenderly, cradling the back of Steve’s head. “How could I ever not like you, huh?”

Steve just shakes his head. He feels like a damn child.

Peggy’s hand finds the space between his shoulder blades, rubbing. “You said your younger self is in the future right now,” she says, putting the conversation back on track. “That isn’t sustainable, Steve.”

“I know,” Steve says.

“Do you know how he could have possibly gotten there?”

Changing the past shouldn’t change the future. Steve has been told this on many occasions since Lang built his time machine, even though it doesn’t make a lick of sense to him, and he thinks it over. Nothing he’s done here should have affected the Steve in the water in the slightest.

Except for the fact that he’s here, pretending to be him. Living his life for him. But that couldn’t possibly have catapulted him into the future.

“I have no idea,” Steve says, reaching blindly back for Peggy’s hand while his other arm clutches at Bucky. “I just know I gotta fix it.”

Peggy squeezes his hand. “And how are you going to do that, my love?”

“I’ve gotta get back there.” Steve lifts his heavy head, taking the time to look both Bucky and Peggy in the eye before he asks perhaps the only correct question he’s thought of since he went back to 1945. “How would you two feel about coming with me to set things right?”

 

* * *

 

_2024_

 

* * *

 

Once Sam gets up, Bucky makes good on his plans from earlier and starts breakfast. He likes cooking, likes the ritual of it. He also likes listening to Sam and Steve talk and laugh behind him at the table, especially now that Steve has put his things back in the spare room and his jacket on the coat rack, face wiped mostly-clean of the worry that had etched deep lines into him.

Bucky scrambles eggs, smiling at the stovetop. Sam and Steve are getting along like a house on fire today, and maybe that shouldn’t surprise him, considering. But it’s kind of nice to hear it all the same. Bucky puts toast in, grabs forks, gives Sam a little shove back into his chair when he tries to stand to help. Steve doesn’t need to be told that Bucky’s got this handled – Bucky’s been bossing him in the kitchen since they were twelve years old.

Bucky pauses with his wooden spoon hovering a quarter inch above the pan. That’s a new memory. He kinda thought he was done getting those back. He shakes his head to clear it, getting back to scrambling, and wonders if he’s ever going to stop being surprised.

“What the _fuck?”_ Sam exclaims behind him. Bucky whirls around.

In the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, a blue circle of crackling electricity has yawned wide into a doorway. Peggy Carter, an older, tired Steve, and another version of himself step through. Peggy is holding her Bucky’s hand. Steve has a briefcase open in his arms, the tesseract casting eerie blue light on his face.

 _Oh,_ Bucky thinks. _Oh, this is what my limit is,_ and promptly faints.

 

* * *

 

Bucky opens his eyes again to see not one, but two very worried Steves looking down at him. Someone laid him out on the couch, his head propped up on a pillow, and the older Steve is holding his metal hand clasped between his own. He lets go as soon as Bucky’s awake, though.

“How are you feeling?” the older Steve asks, grave and earnest.

“Am I hungover, or are there two of you?” Bucky rasps.

The Steves share an amused glance. “He’s okay,” the younger Steve announces.

“Try to lift your head, darling, drink this,” Peggy instructs, elbowing both Steves out of her way so she can sit on the edge of the coffee table, one hand on the back of Bucky’s neck to ease him up enough to sip at her glass of water. Bucky hasn’t had this many people fussing over him since he sprained an ankle in the fourth grade.

“Uh,” he says when she draws the cup back, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Thanks.”

Peggy reaches down and fixes his hair, tucking a lock behind his ear. It’s a pretty tender gesture, coming from a woman he hasn’t seen in nearly eighty years, and it aches like she’s pressed directly on a bruise. He glances at the other Bucky, who is hovering behind everyone else with a wild look in his eyes. Oh, Bucky doesn’t want to do this.

“James, dear, will you retrieve Sam?” Peggy instructs, and it’s a lot easier to think of him as _James_ than as _Bucky,_ so Bucky quietly decides that’s what he’ll call him. “Assuming he’s done being ill, that is.”

James nods and disappears down the hall. 

“Aw, hell, Sam,” Bucky croaks, and tries to sit up. Two Steves and a Peggy push him back down again. 

“Nice try, pal,” the older Steve says. Bucky narrows his eyes at him. 

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he asks, and he doesn’t mean for it to come out as accusatory as it does, but this is just one more thing on a long list of things that he does not have the capacity to deal with. What he needs is a nap. A stiff drink, then a nap. Preferably with Sam wrapped around him and no noise whatsoever.

The older Steve opens his mouth to reply, but then James comes back with Sam leaning on him a little, looking green. 

“Hey, man,” Sam says weakly. “Budge over.” 

Bucky moves his feet out of the way and, partially out of spite, shoves himself up into sitting before anyone can stop him. Sam sits down heavily next to him on the couch. Bucky refuses to acknowledge the wave of dizziness that washes over him at the sudden movement, but it at least gives him an excuse to lean into Sam’s side.

Sam grabs his hand and hangs onto it. Bucky squeezes it back tightly.

The others have scattered about the room. Peggy is sitting on the coffee table in her stocking feet with her heels abandoned by the sofa. The younger Steve – who Bucky decides to call Stevie to keep it all straight – is kneeling next to the couch right next to the older. James looks like he would rather be jumping out a window than endure this, and that makes Bucky’s mouth twist into a wry smile.

“Hi,” Bucky says, looking at James.

James meets his gaze. “Long hair, huh,” he says. Bucky shrugs.

What does one say to an eighty-year younger version of themself? James shifts from foot to foot and Bucky thinks – God, did someone really hand that kid a gun? Then he sees the pinned-up sleeve at James’ left side and his eyes whip over to Steve. The exhausted guilt on his face tells Bucky everything he needs to know about what he did in the past.

“You saved me?” Bucky asks, voice cracking. “That’s what you went back in time to do?”

Steve’s eyes are wide and sad and maybe even a little scared. Scared of what? Scared of _him?_ “Did you think I was gonna go back and sleep well knowin’ where you were?” he asks, putting his hand on Bucky’s arm. “I read your file, Buck, I knew exactly where they were keeping you. Of course I broke you out.”

Above Steve’s head, James and Stevie are making loaded eye contact.

“Are you my Steve?” James asks. Stevie looks just as overwhelmed as James does as he stands, turning to face him.

“I think so,” Stevie says. He smiles hesitantly.

James crosses the room and decks him so fast nobody sees it coming.

The room erupts into chaos. Stevie reels back, having not seen the punch coming, and Sam leaps up to steady him. Peggy and Bucky exclaim in unison, and Steve falls right on his ass from where he was kneeling.

“You crashed the fucking Valkyrie!” James hollers. “And you weren’t picked up by fishermen!”

 _“What?”_ Stevie yelps.

“You were just gonna die and leave me in cryo!” James’ face is red and blotchy now, eyes wet. Bucky wants to look away, but he can’t. He’s transfixed. “Is that what happens when you ain’t got me, Steve?”

“I didn’t know you were in cryo!” Stevie says helplessly. “Buck –”

But James is kissing him, pressing up on the balls of his feet to do it, and Stevie just flounders for a moment before his hands find James’ waist. Bucky looks at Sam. Sam raises his eyebrows. There’s a silent _isn’t Steve with Peggy?_ that crosses between them, but if Stevie has prior commitments, he sure isn’t acting like it.

It helps that Peggy is watching the pair of them with a look of fond indulgence. 

“Do I even wanna know what freaky shit you got up to with them?” Bucky asks Steve, jerking his head in the direction of James and Peggy.

Steve blushes. “Nothing that would make your hair curl, Buck.”

Uh huh. James has pulled away, breathing hard. Stevie looks dazzled. Bucky remembers when he used to feel like he was teetering on the brink of kissing Steve like that, when they were young, like it would take anything to just tip him over the edge. The final push never came, not for him, but at least this younger self of his managed it.

“Hey, guys?” Sam says. Everybody looks at him. “I feel like I’m getting vertigo. Can somebody explain to me what just happened?”

James has his arm around Stevie and doesn’t look at all likely to let go any time soon. Peggy’s dark eyes go from James and Stevie to Bucky and Sam, then land on Steve. “Steven?” she prompts. “This was your idea.”

Steve bows his head. “It was my mistake,” he says heavily. “That’s what this was.”

“Steve,” Sam says. It’s the first time he’s addressed him, at least that Bucky was conscious for. “C’mon, man.”

“I never should have left you,” Steve says. He sits up on his knees, putting a hand over the ones Sam and Bucky have clasped together. “Either of you. I thought I was doing you both a favor, or – I don’t know what I thought. I just wanted to go home.”

Bucky tastes acid and looks at the floor. 

“When I realized how bad I fucked up, I came here immediately,” Steve continues. Peggy coughs meaningfully behind him. “Uh. With a push from these two, I mean.”

“Do you know how he got here?” Bucky asks, pointing at Stevie.

Steve shakes his head no.

“I have a theory about that, actually,” Peggy offers. Steve kind of boggles his eyes at her, and Bucky huffs a laugh, because... yeah. It makes sense that he and Fury and Banner would bash their heads against the issue for weeks and all it takes is a musing glance from Carter to unknot it. “I’ve been cooperating with Howard to investigate strange energy readings in the area where we projected the Valkyrie may have crashed, searching for the missing tesseract. Naturally, this was before I knew he was keeping it in our bedroom closet.” She shoots Steve a sideways glance. Steve shrinks in on himself slightly.

 _Our bedroom closet._ That acid taste in Bucky’s mouth is going nowhere.

“What does that have to do with Steve?” Sam asks.

“If the timestream splinters every time a moment is altered,” Peggy says, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. “Then I’m not sure what that would do to a moment in time that has been altered more than once. Darling, you said you’d already come back to change 1945 in order to steal the tesseract the first time. Coming back again would destabilize it further.”

“I told you we know fuck-all about time travel,” Bucky says, feeling lightheaded.

“You did,” Stevie says. “You did say that.”

“So, wait, hang on.” Sam pinches the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb. “Steve going back to 1945 destabilized the timestream? What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means that a person isn’t meant to double back on their own history,” Steve says, soft. “Means that there’s only supposed to be one Steve in the ‘40s at a time. I guess the other me got ricocheted here to compensate.”

“I’m not going to 2012,” Stevie blurts out abruptly. “Is that gonna screw with the timestream too?”

Peggy, Bucky, Steve and James all look at Stevie at once. He’s got his arm around James, now, and looks very determined underneath the terror. Oh, Bucky knows that look. Stevie isn’t going to back down.

“Where are you gonna go, then?” Bucky asks him.

Stevie looks Steve dead in the eye. “I just wanna go home too.”

Steve’s face does something complicated as he holds Stevie’s gaze. An unspoken conversation is passed back and forth between them, Stevie’s eyes imploring, Steve’s jaw tense. Bucky’s eyes bounce from one Steve to the other, trying to follow the argument, but in the end Steve just ducks his head with a soft little laugh.

“What the hell,” he says, defeated. “I already changed enough by going back. What’s a little more?”

“But – 2012,” Bucky protests. Isn’t there supposed to be a Steve there? What will happen if there isn’t one this time?

Steve shrugs. “2012 is already gonna go different, ‘cause he knows you’re alive,” he says. “Putting him back where he came from isn’t going to make things go the way they did the first time.”

“I’m not leaving without him,” James adds. His hold around Stevie’s waist tightens visibly.

Peggy’s eyes are steel. “Nor am I.”

Bucky’s head hurts. _Fucking time travel,_ he thinks, and rubs a hand over his eyes with a little groan. “Alright. So the three of them go back to 1945,” he says, waving a hand at James, Stevie, and Peggy. “Where does that leave us?”

“Yeah,” Sam says. He puts a hand to the middle of Bucky’s back, right between his shoulder blades. The amount it comforts Bucky is frankly absurd. “Where will you go?”

Steve’s eyes are unreadable. “I wasn’t planning on going anywhere, Sam.”

Bucky hears a roaring sound in his ears, blood rushing so fast that his right hand twitches against his leg. He stands, breaking away from both Sam and Steve, and paces to the window where he braces his hands against the sill. Behind him, there’s a long moment of silence before Stevie tentatively offers to take the tesseract with him when he goes back to 1945. The debate that follows is halting, and Bucky can feel eyes on his back, but he doesn’t turn around. He can’t; he knows what a panic attack is, knows how it feels when one is creeping up on him. He breathes. In for five seconds, hold for three, out for five. He does it a couple times until his lips stop buzzing.

“Good,” he says, finally, when he hears a lull in the conversation. “You three can do it the right way this time. The way it shoulda gone the first time ‘round.” He turns, looking at them. Stevie, James, and Peggy look like they belong together, bodies angled subconsciously so they’re leaning toward each other. He meets Stevie’s eyes. “I told you about HYDRA. I’m trusting you to do something about that.”

Stevie nods, eyes wide and sad. He reaches for Peggy’s hand, holds it briefly, then lets go of both her and James to stride over to Bucky.

“I won’t forget you,” he says, cradling Bucky’s face between his palms. His touch is sweet enough that Bucky can’t bring himself to flinch away from it. Stevie leans in and kisses Bucky’s forehead before he withdraws.

“Take good care of him,” Bucky replies, eyes flicking over toward James.

Stevie smiles that thousand-watt, million-dollar smile of his. “I will. I promise.”

The following round of hugs that ensues is awkward, but only because the situation is so damn bizarre. Bucky gets pulled into an embrace by Peggy, who kisses him soundly on the cheek and tells him how lovely his long hair is. Bucky blushes, smiling at her. She gives Sam the same smacking kiss, which is hilarious because Sam doesn’t see it coming at all, and then she steps up to Steve.

“Be careful, my darling,” she says, voice achingly soft.

Bucky looks away, which ends up making him meet James’ eyes.

“Hey,” James says, and steps toward him. 

Bucky swallows thickly, shoving his hands in his pockets. “...Hey.”

“Nobody came for you in ‘45?” James asks. Bucky sees the absent arm at James’ side and has a flash of memory of being strapped to a table, metal arm bolted to his flesh. To his bones. He shakes his head. James’ eyes burn, jaw working, and then makes a rough sound as he throws the one arm he’s got left around Bucky’s shoulders to drag him in. Bucky goes with a choked protest, but James isn’t having any of it, and hugs him tight. 

James refuses to meet Bucky’s eyes when he pulls back again, but Bucky doesn’t blame him in the slightest. He walks right up to Steve instead, curling his hand around the collar of Steve’s shirt. Steve looks apprehensive, opening his mouth before he closes it again, like he isn’t sure if James is going to hit him like he did Stevie. But James isn’t rearing back to punch, he’s leaning up so he can kiss Steve’s lips briefly.

“Jerk,” James tells him.

“Punk,” Steve replies, wry.

Bucky reaches for Sam’s hand again when Steve shows Stevie, James, and Peggy how to operate the tesseract’s briefcase. Bucky squeezes Sam’s hand, a silent _you good?_ that Sam replies with a squeeze of his own. Bucky doesn’t let go.

Stevie uses the tesseract to create a portal back to 1945, glancing back over his shoulder to smile at Sam. “I’ll keep an eye out for Riley,” he tells him. Sam stiffens next to Bucky.

“You’re gonna be an old man by the time Riley’s active,” Sam says with a slight waver in his voice.

Stevie shrugs. “The guy standing next to you is a hundred years old, and he’s looking pretty spry.”

Bucky cracks a smile. Sam shakes his head, laughing, and sounds real grateful when he says “Thanks, man.”

With one last nod, Stevie disappears through the portal, followed by James and Peggy. It snaps shut behind them, one last crackle of blue energy sparking in the middle of Bucky’s living room before it vanishes, leaving nothing but a vague metallic scent behind it.

Steve is still standing there, shoulders tense as he turns to look at Sam and Bucky, who haven’t let go of each other’s hands.

“Well,” he says. His tongue darts out to wet his lips. “I’m home.”

Bucky remembers James slugging Stevie in the jaw and wonders if he can get away with that now. Instead, he sighs heavily and looks at Sam. “Do you want an Irish coffee?”

“Please,” Sam says fervently. He leans in and kisses Bucky, a soft, sweet thing before he pulls back. Bucky feels flustered and awkward, because Sam did that in front of _Steve_ , and he knows that Sam said he wasn’t trying to hide this, but – it feels different, now that he’s proving it. Bucky just touches Sam’s hip and avoids looking at Steve, crossing into the kitchen to once again put a pot of coffee between himself and whatever his current problem is. It’s served him well this far. 

Sam and Steve have begun talking, and Bucky drowns it out as best he can.

 _I’m home,_ Steve said, like it’s that easy. Like he hasn’t been gone for the past month, after claiming he would never return. Bucky doesn’t know how to feel now that he’s back, saying he’s sorry, saying he came back for him and Sam. It’s hard to swallow, that’s all. 

It means a whole lot that he went back to save Bucky’s younger self from years of torment, though... Bucky had kind of thought Steve would forget about him, as soon as he was back to the past. It feels stupid to have thought that now, having seen many different combinations of Steves and Buckys making out in his living room, but it doesn’t escape his attention that the only Bucky not involved in said necking is him. Not that the other Steve didn’t give it a solid try before Bucky shot him down. 

MRS. JAMES BARNES makes her usual pleasant beep, so Bucky makes Irish coffee with probably too much whiskey. He makes three cups, because he still has a heart after all, and carries them back to the living room where the two men he loves the most in the world are waiting for him to help figure out what the hell to do next.

Bucky suspects he’ll need more whiskey.


	7. Soft in the Middle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Here’s the thing,” Bucky starts, whole body rigid. “I feel like God doesn’t hand out an endless string of second chances.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings in the end notes.

**CHAPTER SIX**

_ 2024 _

 

* * *

Two coffees in and Bucky switches to straight whiskey. It takes a while for him to get drunk – he was given something like the serum Steve has, after all – but once it catches up to him, it really hits hard. He’s waiting for it to hit. He and Sam sit on the leather couch they bought at IKEA and assembled together, while Steve is in a chair salvaged from what’s left of the Avengers Compound, looking at them with the eyes of a starving man.

Steve has told them everything, now. Everything he did in the past is laid out for him and Sam; Steve’s prison break, the Commandos, Peggy’s affection, and then Bucky’s. Steve stumbles over explaining how he got involved with the other Bucky, ears burning. Nobody interrupts him.

Bucky is too tired to be angry. He didn’t think this was possible, but he’s learning all kinds of things about himself this afternoon, and exhaustion tugs at him. He takes another sip from the glass in his hand.

“Hey,” Sam murmurs, nudging him with his shoulder. “You wanna slow down, there, maybe?”

“Nope,” Bucky says.

Sam steals the glass right out of his hand and knocks back what’s left in it. Then he nabs the bottle from across the coffee table and caps it, putting it aside. He does it so quickly and so neatly that Bucky doesn’t have time to protest, although he tries to grab at his glass half-heartedly. Sam just gives him a bland smile and puts it on the table.

Alright. Fair enough. Bucky wipes a hand down his face, sighing – maybe he is a little drunk after all.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to pull my head out of my ass,” Steve says, quiet. 

Bucky doesn’t know if he can do this. “You buried it pretty far up there,” he snaps. Steve startles. This is the first time Bucky has done more than just look mutinous, voice sharp as a razor as he leans his elbows on his knees. “You said you were with me to the end of the line,” Bucky continues, jabbing a finger at him, and he can feel the alcohol sitting heavy in his head now, the upset in his body just as much as his mind. “You  _ said  _ that, Steve.”

Steve looks like he’s been slapped. “Buck...”

“He’s not the only one you left in the lurch,” Sam adds. He’s a great deal less brutal-sounding than Bucky is, but that might be because he’s a lot closer to sober. “Running off like that as soon as everything calmed down put us in a pretty rough situation.”

Bucky grunts. That’s one way to say it.

Steve opens his mouth, then closes it again. He looks like he’s going to try to reach for the both of them, but aborts the movement before it leaves his lap. “I don’t know how else to tell you both I’m sorry,” he says, his shoulders hunching, and Bucky knows how awful Steve usually is at apologizing – knows what it’s costing him not to fight the anger that Bucky and Sam are beaming into him from across the room. He knows, but it doesn’t make him feel any more inclined to forgive him. It honestly just pisses him off more. “Look, I came back,” Steve tries. “Doesn’t that count for something?”

Bucky sees red. He stands, legs a little unsteady, and considers several things. He thinks about striding over there and knocking Steve backwards, sending him straight to the floor. He knows he can do it, and Steve would let him, even. He thinks about kissing Steve hard enough to taste blood. Steve would probably let him do that too.

“I can’t do this,” Bucky says. His voice is rough enough to the point of being raw. “I need to... I gotta get my head on straight.”

Sam rises from the couch as well, concern on his face, and Bucky is so tired of making him look after him. Sam has enough on his plate already. “Buck,” Sam says.

“Are you gonna be okay if I leave for a while?” Bucky asks him, hyper-conscious of Steve’s eyes on him while he speaks. He touches Sam’s arm, meaning,  _ are you gonna be okay if I leave you alone with him for a while? _

Sam huffs a breath and tugs on a loose lock of Bucky’s hair. “Go. Come back when you’re sane and sober.”

That’s a big ask, and Bucky is tempted to say as much, but if he stays in this apartment a moment longer, he’s going to crawl out of his own skin. He touches Sam’s arm again, higher on his bicep, and then slips from the room without looking back. He grabs his jacket from the hall closet and puts his feet into his boots without bothering to lace them up properly. He’s out the door a second later, locking it again, clattering down the front steps with his hands shoved in his pockets and his shoulders hunched around the awful feeling that bubbles up in him like a geyser, threatening to blow.

Bucky doesn’t know where the hell he’s going. He walks around the block twice and then heads to the neighborhood park, where he sits down heavily on a bench and waits to sober up. He sat here earlier this week with the other Steve, the younger one, and ate so much fruit that he thought he might burst with the orange-bright sweetness of it all. When he and Steve were children, they imagined so many different versions of that very thing, leaning against each other with their knees knocking together, with full bellies and fuller hearts. Stevie and James get that now, together with Peggy, and the amount of gratitude Bucky feels for that doesn’t take away from his jealousy in the slightest.

His head clears after about twenty-five minutes. Serum’s good for something, he guesses. 

He rises to his feet and stalks back to his apartment, where his car is waiting for him, and slides into the driver’s seat. He fumbles the keys and has to blink away the fog in his eyes that threatens to spill over before he can take the damn car out of park. 

He drives before he knows where he’s going, but by the time he’s halfway to the Avengers Compound, he isn’t surprised. It was either that or Sam’s apartment. He doesn’t think it would be all that chill to sulk in his maybe-boyfriend’s place while the other guy they’re both in love with does his best to apologize for fucking them over, so he drives all the way to his official designated Avengers parking space instead, not even bothering to pretend he isn’t parking crooked. One of them needs to catch Nick Fury up on what’s going on, anyway. Fury will want to know that they’ve switched Steves again.

Bucky puts his head on the steering wheel and does nothing but breathe for a long time.

 

* * *

Sam isn’t exactly a stranger to him now, but Steve is having more trouble than usual reading him. Sam collects mugs and glasses and the other detritus in the living room and takes them all to the kitchen sink, and Steve follows him from room to room like a lost dog, waiting to be chastised. 

“That was a rotten thing you did to Bucky,” Sam tells him gravely while he arranges dishes in the top rack of the dishwasher. “He barely held it together.”

_ He said he’d be fine,  _ Steve doesn’t say, because he knows how shallow and pathetic that will sound. “How about you?” he asks instead, leaning in the kitchen doorway with his arms crossed tight over his chest. Sam breathes out harshly through his nose.

“Well, I thought you and me were falling in love, before the snap,” Sam says, turning, wiping his hands on a dish towel. “But you left, so I guess I was wrong.”

The bottom of Steve’s stomach falls out. “...Sam.”

“No, I get it,” Sam continues, waving him off. “You loved her hard, and you loved her first. You saw a chance and you took it – believe me, I know all about missed chances.”

But it was never really about Peggy, is the problem. Steve can nod along and take the out Sam is handing him, but he’s sick of lying, and he desperately needs Sam to understand the truth. To understand why he came back. “The man who loved Peggy died when he woke up in 2012. I thought I could be him again if I went back, but –” He rubs his hand over his eyes. “But he ain’t me anymore. You saw that, when he showed up here. That ain’t me anymore.”

Sam’s hand is gently pulling Steve’s away from his face. Steve looks at him, really looks, hard enough that he can see flecks of gold in the deep brown of Sam’s eyes. “So you came back,” Sam prompts. He holds onto Steve’s hand.

“I came home,” Steve corrects. He takes Sam’s hand and brings it up to his chest, lying it flat over his heart so Sam can feel how fast it’s racing. “I came home to you. To both of you.”

“It might take him a while before he forgives you,” Sam says warningly.

One corner of Steve’s mouth twitches. He wonders if Sam’s really talking about himself instead of Bucky. “Buck is garbage at holding grudges.”

“Unlike you,” Sam teases.

“Unlike me,” Steve agrees, rueful. “What’s going on with you two, anyway?”

Sam strokes his thumb over Steve’s collar bone, the tip of his thumb flirting with the collar of his shirt. “I understand why you took on the whole government for him, now,” he admits, and the pained adoration on his face is so horribly familiar to Steve that he can’t do anything but sling an arm around Sam and drag him into a hug.

“We gotta get him back, huh,” Steve says, crushing Sam close. He hopes he can breathe. He isn’t going to pull back.

“That’s all on you, baby,” Sam says, voice muffled, and Steve is so glad to be back that he can hardly stand it. Sam feels so good in his arms, warm and lovely and real.

“I do love you,” Steve whispers, because it’s about time he said it out loud. He should have said it a long time ago. “You weren’t wrong.”

Sam is quiet for a long moment, but then he sighs, nuzzling deeper into Steve’s chest. “I know,” he murmurs back. “I think that’s the part that hurt the most.”

Steve rubs up and down Sam’s back, then cradles the back of his head in the cup of one broad hand. “Won’t happen again,” he promises softly, and doesn’t let go of Sam until he can feel the relieved slump of Sam’s body into his own that means he believes him.

“I’m holding you to that,” Sam says, voice wavering. He looks up at Steve like his whole future is written on Steve’s face, and Steve cups his jaw in his hand, gazing at him. 

“I’m holding  _ you,” _ he says, waiting for Sam’s smile to break over his face before he allows his own to do the same.

 

* * *

Once Bucky’s done filling in Fury on what went down at his apartment – omitting several key details, which he thinks is for the best – he’s at all kinds of loose ends. Fury kicks him out of the lab with strict orders to tell Captain Rogers to make up his damn mind, which Bucky almost laughs at, but then he has no other tasks to keep him occupied outside of his apartment and he starts to panic.

It’s late enough in the day by this point that it’s past lunch time. He considers moping in his favorite sandwich shop, which definitely has a certain appeal, but the longer he stays away from the two men in his living room, the more he feels like a coward. Ignoring the problem will not solve it. Steve is here, and he says he’s here to stay, says he never should have left. Bucky should be happy about this. He should feel vindicated, or at the very least, hopeful.

What he feels instead is so angry that he can barely see straight. He wants a cigarette. He wants to go home and bury his face in the curve of Sam’s neck. He wants the world to make sense again. Every time he thinks he wrestles it into a shape he can stomach, something new comes around and makes acid well up in his throat.

_ I don’t know how else to tell you both I’m sorry,  _ Steve had said. Well, Bucky hadn’t known any other ways to beg him to stay, in the days before he left, because he’s the one that follows – he’s always been the one that follows. Steve forges ahead, and Bucky is his shadow, baring his teeth in the wake Steve has always left behind him, even when he was small. Nazis used to spread hushed rumors that Captain America’s enemies would drop dead as he approached, that’s how successful Bucky had been at keeping him alive; the angel of death, that’s what they called him, Captain America’s tenth plague. He has never once tried to ask Steve to follow him, instead. The thought has never once crossed his mind.

Bucky sits on the edge of the sidewalk in the parking lot for lack of a better plan and folds his arms around his bent knees. The Bucky that is still Steve’s angel of death went back to 1945 with Peggy and Stevie. Why didn’t Steve want to stay with him? James is the better Bucky, the Bucky Steve wants. The Bucky that HYDRA killed inside him slowly over the course of sixty-eight years. Did Steve come back for Sam? Ready to settle for whatever Bucky he found in 2024? 

The awful, miserable feeling of it all rises in Bucky like the tide. He puts his face down onto his overlapping forearms. 

He still loves Steve. That was never in question. Bucky has loved him so long and so quietly that he wouldn’t know how to stop, the loving has become just one more organ in his body, beating with his blood and swelling with his breaths. The way that Bucky loves Sam is new and young, and makes him feel young, but the way that he loves Steve is as old as he is. What does it mean, now, that his love for Steve isn’t the only love in his body? What will he become with it inside him?

Bucky raises red-rimmed eyes and looks up at the shape of New York around him, the shape of the city that he is slowly learning how to adore again. For better or for worse, Steve is back, and he gave up the tesseract in order to do it. The world has tried to separate the two of them by force more times than Bucky can count on one hand, but he’s here, he’s home, even if Bucky wants to hit him for saying it like that. There is nothing Bucky can do but love him.

Well – he can stay mad at him, of course. But that won’t stop the loving. He rises to his feet, brushing off the back of his jeans, and walks to where his car is waiting. It’s time to take the pressure off Sam and finally face Steve head-on. 

 

* * *

Bucky walks through the front door and hears laughter. He raises an eyebrow, locking the door again, and walks into the living room where Sam and Steve are leaning against each other on the couch. Sam has his head on Steve’s shoulder. They look happier than Bucky has seen them in a long time. Intimate. In love.

“Buck,” Steve says, raising his head, happiness sliding right off his face. Bucky would feel bad for ruining their moment, but Sam is looking at him, and there’s a soft private smile on his face that Bucky is slowly coming to realize is an expression that’s reserved for him. Like Bucky walking into the room is a weight off his mind, like he’s been patiently waiting for these particular combat boots to cross the threshold his whole life. It makes Bucky feel something precious bloom to life in the center of his chest, seeing that.

“Here’s the thing,” Bucky starts, whole body rigid. “I feel like God doesn’t hand out an endless string of second chances.”

Steve nods, unhappy, looking like he’s bracing himself for Bucky to tell him that he isn’t going to hand him another one either.

“So I think I’d have to be a pretty big idiot not to take an obvious one that fell into my lap,” Bucky continues, hands opening and closing at his sides, and doesn’t loosen up any when Steve rises from the couch. He holds out a hand in a  _ stop  _ motion, which makes Steve halt mid-step. “I’m not done yet.”

“Should I be here for this?” Sam asks, very measured.

“Yes,” Bucky answers very fast. “Please.”

Sam nods, leaning back against the couch.

“You fucked the other Bucky, but you didn’t want to fuck me,” Bucky says.

Steve turns a shade of pale that Bucky didn’t think humans could turn. “Buck, no,” he says.

“Why didn’t you stay with him, huh?” Bucky asks. He means to demand it, to pour strength and accusation into his voice, but all it sounds is plaintive. Pitiful. “You coulda stuck with a guy who isn’t fucked in the head.”

“He wasn’t you,” Steve says helplessly. “Every time I looked at him, I was looking for you.”

Bucky looks away, making a dismissive sound low in his throat. “Because a vaguely suicidal assassin with PTSD and an eating disorder is a big step up.”

“Ex-assassin,” Steve says. “And yeah. You are.”

“I didn’t know the other guy,” Sam offers. “But I gotta agree.” Bucky looks at him, lips parting in surprise, and Sam just smiles wryly. “I like the Bucky I got.”

Bucky’s stomach tenses, that’s how much he has to strain not to stride right over there and kiss them senseless – and God, yeah, it’s both of them he wants to launch himself at. He licks his lips, hesitating, and keeps looking at Sam when he says, “You gave me the benefit of the doubt when you had no reason to, and –” he glances at Steve again. “– And I can do the same for you. If you’ll have me.”

Steve doesn’t have Bucky’s restraint. He crosses the room in two long steps and takes Bucky’s face between his hands, bending to kiss him soundly, then pulls back with stars in his eyes. “You’re the only Bucky I want,” he promises in a whisper. “I dreamed about you every night.”

An ache pangs through Bucky’s whole body, from his closed throat to his weak knees, and he can’t say anything at all. His lips buzz from Steve’s kiss. With a creak of leather couch cushion, Sam is up and joining them, and both Steve and Bucky pull back to make room for him in the lattice grip of their arms. Bucky has to lean in and kiss Sam, touching his cheek with his left hand, feeling his heart stutter in his chest when Sam leans into his metal palm to kiss him back.

When Bucky opens his eyes again, Steve is watching the pair of them with an expression that is so nakedly longing that Bucky’s fist clenches around a handful of Steve’s shirt nearly hard enough to tear it.

“I woulda followed you anywhere,” Bucky says. “Woulda done anything you asked.”

“I know,” Steve admits, soft. “I took that for granted.”

Bucky nods. It feels good to hear him say it out loud. “If you pull some shit like this again, I’m not gonna forgive you,” Bucky tells him, voice rough. He waits until Steve gives a jerky nod before he huffs a small laugh and adds, “Now kiss Sam like you mean it.”

Sam chokes on his own laugh, and is still laughing when Steve does just that, one hand still cradling the side of Bucky’s neck while he kisses Sam again and again until Sam melts into him with a tiny desperate sound. Bucky strokes the curve of Sam’s cheekbone while he and Steve find their rhythm, and then, after a moment, dips in and puts his lips to the soft underside of Sam’s jaw. The taste of his skin fills Bucky’s mouth, and he sets teeth very gently right over Sam’s fluttering pulse and lathes his tongue gently after. Sam makes a noise that Bucky wants to chase.

“I can barely keep up with one supersoldier, how’m I gonna keep up with two?” Sam groans, and Bucky breaks away from Steve so he can slide behind Sam, circling his arms around his waist while he nuzzles into the back of Sam’s neck.

“Don’t worry,” Bucky murmurs. “I’ve got you.” He meets Steve’s eyes over Sam’s shoulder and raises his eyebrows, prompting him.

“We’ve got you,” Steve corrects, and smiles at Bucky as bright as sunshine, and for the first time Bucky thinks – maybe he can hope about this. Maybe he’s allowed to trust this enough to put his weight against it, slowly, one foot before the other. He used to think he would be chasing after Steve until the end of the line, or at least to the end.

Now he holds Sam against his chest while Steve kisses him over and over, and thinks it’s time for Steve to chase after him, for once. Until the end of the line, and then even after.

_ Ken y’hi ratzon.  _ May it be God’s will.

 

* * *

 

They end up going to Bucky’s favorite sandwich place after all. They don’t talk much, but it’s good to be near each other, and Bucky thinks he can see the first sprouts of green through the layer of snow between them.

They go back to Bucky’s place and watch movies until they’re tired, since all three of them are catching up on lost time. Sam and Bucky are five years behind thanks to Thanos, and Steve never managed to catch up to the future in the first place.

Neither has Bucky in all honesty, but Steve seems content to be teased, so Bucky decides to reward him for being a good sport by putting his feet in his lap. His head is already pillowed on Sam’s thigh.  _ You’re included in this,  _ he’s trying to say, and he’s pretty sure that the delicate way Steve curls his hand over the bone of his ankle means he gets it.

 

* * *

The bed isn’t big enough for three grown men to fit comfortably, but they make do. Bucky ends up in the middle, which Steve thinks is probably for the best, because Bucky has always slept better with someone watching his six. Steve wonders if it’s even better with two, Steve skating his fingertips up and down the ripple of Bucky’s spine, Sam’s cheek pressed to Bucky’s shoulder. They all kept their clothes on through the night, but this is still the most vulnerable Steve has felt in maybe his whole life, all his sins plain and open and halfway to forgiven.

He doesn’t deserve this. He will do everything he can to earn the second chance Bucky and Sam are giving him, which feels like a worthier goal than any he has taken on in a very long time. There is no war to fight. No one to answer to, except for the men lying next to him, resting.

And maybe Fury, eventually. But Steve is in no hurry to do a mission debrief.

Steve slides his hand beneath Bucky’s tank top and puts his palm flat to the small of Bucky’s back, more grateful than he can word out loud that Bucky just sighs and presses into it, back arching. This is so far removed from the skittish creature that Steve left behind, who flinched away from every touch; but Steve is starting to wonder if perhaps that was his doing as much as Bucky’s, not making it clear what he meant every time he reached out. He can’t blame Bucky for shying away from that uncertainty.

He resolves to give him no more cause to doubt for as long as he lives. Him and Sam, who is looking at Steve now with half-lidded eyes, expression on his face one that Steve can’t look away from. Sam is still holding his gaze as he bends to kiss the skin between Bucky’s shoulder blades, and when Bucky makes a low, pleased sound, Steve feels heat coil up so tight in his gut that his mouth drops open. Sam smirks at him.

“Steve’s lookin’ at us with those big doe eyes of his,” Sam murmurs into Bucky’s ear, low enough that Steve wouldn’t be able to hear him if he didn’t have enhanced hearing. “Wanna give him something good to watch?”

Steve can feel Bucky’s full-body shudder under his hand. Bucky’s always had a little vain streak, a predisposition to spend too much time on his hair and preen under attention, but this is something else altogether. He rolls onto his side and picks his head up to shoot a dark-eyed smile at Sam, a crooked flirty thing, and then they’re kissing, and – Steve is supposed to watch. So he does.

Sam winds fingers in Bucky’s hair close to the root and pulls. Bucky tips his head back easy, easy, eyes fluttering closed as he moans, and Steve can’t  _ not  _ touch him. He spoons right up behind Bucky, plastering himself against his back, and rucks his shirt up more so he can tease his thumbs over Bucky’s nipples. Bucky whimpers.

But that might be because Sam is kissing his stomach, sliding down the bed to pull his underwear down, and then dips his mouth lower.

“Fuck,” Bucky gasps, pressing back hard against Steve, but Steve doesn’t let him wriggle too far. He just hangs on and gives him something to press against as Sam starts to blow him. 

It should be stranger than it is, watching his two best friends fuck, especially since Steve is still a little unclear where the three of them stand. But it looks right, it looks natural, and Sam is so beautiful with his mouth working Bucky over with slow bobs of his head. Steve kisses the side of Bucky’s neck, listening to Bucky’s breath catch and catch. He sucks hard on the juncture where Bucky’s neck meets his shoulder. 

Bucky squirms. “Ah – Steve –” 

“Is it Steve’s mouth on your dick?” Sam asks, pulling back. His lips are wet. “Whose name should you be sayin’ right now, Barnes?”

Bucky shivers again.  _ Jeez,  _ Steve thinks, that heat in his belly throbbing. “Sam,” Bucky says, reaching for him, and Steve gets to watch Sam slither back up Bucky’s body so he can catch him up in his arms as well. All three of them are shoved up together now, Bucky caught between them, shifting between trying to get close to Sam and rubbing against Steve. It doesn’t miss Steve’s attention that Bucky’s rubbing puts his ass about right where Steve would want it, and he hears himself groan as his hips try to grind and meet him.

“C’mere,” Sam says, and nips Bucky’s lower lip before he pulls away and sits up against the headboard, taking a moment to strip out of his t-shirt and toss it aside. Steve tugs Bucky’s tank top up his body, lobbing it over the side of the bed, and Bucky kicks off his underwear so he’s completely bare as he pushes himself up and slides right into Sam’s lap.

“Why’re you still in your underwear?” Bucky asks, dragging his mouth across Sam’s cheek, his jaw.

“Good question,” Sam agrees, and has Bucky sit up on his knees so he can shove his boxers down his thighs. “Steve, get the lube. Bedside table.”

Steve does as he’s told and retrieves the lube, offering it to Sam, who takes it with a smile and eyes that glitter.

“Wanna show Steve what he’s been missing out on?” Sam asks, tipping his head up to look at Bucky. His voice is extraordinarily tender. Bucky grins down at him, eyes crinkling at the corners, and it’s that damn grin that makes Steve reach down and touch himself through the pajama pants he’s borrowing from Sam.

“You watching?” Bucky asks, tossing that grin over his shoulder toward Steve. This is the look Steve has been dreaming about, even if there’s something a little more shy in the curl of Bucky’s lips than there usually is in Steve’s dreams. 

“Couldn’t look away if I tried,” Steve answers, hoarse.

Bucky turns back to Sam and kisses him with showy deliberation, lots of tongue, winding his arms around Sam’s neck while Sam pops the cap on the bottle of lube and gets his fingers slick to put them between Bucky’s legs. Steve watches the tremble in Bucky’s thighs, hears the blood rush loud in his own ears as he sees Bucky start to rock up and down in Sam’s lap to try and fuck himself on Sam’s hand.

They’re gonna show Steve what he’s been missing out on, huh. He gets the game, now. He’s guessing it’s two parts joking and one part serious, so he plays along, making an appreciative noise as Sam puts a second finger inside, other hand stroking Bucky’s dick with slow wet pulls.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Bucky groans, head tipping back so his hair cascades down his shoulders in a dark waterfall that nearly reaches the base of his spine, that’s how long it’s getting. “Before I’m  _ old,  _ Sam.”

“Thought you were never gonna get mouthy,” Sam teases, moving a little faster. There may be a third finger, Steve can’t tell from where he’s sitting. “D’you get shy with an audience?”

Steve’s head is quickly filled with images of Bucky being even mouthier than he’s being right now, which makes his head swim. And Sam was the one who was worried about keeping up. 

_ “Please,”  _ Bucky says, and Steve can recognize in his voice when he’s putting on a show, but the breathy sound of the word is no less effective for the fact that he’s leaning into it.

Sam slows his hand, glancing at Steve over Bucky’s shoulder as he kisses Bucky’s neck. “Please what, baby?”

“Please quit messing around and fuck me,” Bucky grits out.

Steve has to shove a hand into his pants and wrap it around his dick, because – hell. He can’t remember the last time he was this turned on. It’s even more obvious, now, how hard he’d tried to force himself into a place he shouldn’t have in the ‘40s. Sam is right. He’s been missing out on where he’s supposed to be, smack dab in the middle of these two. Sex has never made this much sense before.

Sam reaches over and grabs a condom, rolling it into place while Bucky eggs him on, and then Bucky’s lining himself up so he can sink down, and Steve makes a noise like he’s been punched in the stomach. Bucky takes a moment to adjust, exhaling unsteadily, but he seems like he knows what he’s doing when he plants his hands on Sam’s shoulders and starts to ride him in earnest.

Getting out of his pajamas is suddenly an emergency. Steve struggles out of his clothes and resettles in a position with a better view. Bucky makes high, sweet little sounds as he figures out the exact right angle, Sam’s hands tight and encouraging at his hips. His hair bounces with every connection, which would be perfect to grab just like this, even though Steve is pretty sure that would mess up the pace he’s setting. Still. That’s a thought for later.

For now, he just strokes himself in time with Bucky’s movements, memorizing the way Bucky’s mouth falls open in pleasure, the way Sam grips him hard and mouths encouragement against whatever part of Bucky is in front of his lips.

“Steve is touchin’ himself right now, watching us,” Sam says, voice a rough whisper. Steve finds Bucky’s little choking groan in response to that very gratifying. “We look that good, Buck.”

“Should hope so,” Bucky gasps. “Oh – Sam, I’m gonna...”

“Yeah, yeah, baby, that’s it.” Sam jacks Bucky off fast and sure, and Bucky comes in a rush that nearly makes him topple backward. Steve lunges to catch him, and Sam makes an approving noise and pushes a little until Steve really does have an armful of Bucky, Bucky’s back against his front, Sam maneuvering them until he’s between Bucky’s legs again and sliding right back in.

Bucky throws an arm back to clutch at Steve’s shoulder. Steve wraps his arms around him, holds him up, kisses the crown of his sweat-damp hair. It feels like a natural progression to lean over him to kiss Sam hard as Sam fucks into him faster, licking into Sam’s mouth. Every thrust pushes Bucky up against Steve’s body, and it takes an embarrassingly short amount of time before even just that much pushes Steve over the edge, spending himself against the small of Bucky’s back with a whine.

Sam follows a second later. Steve likes to think he has something to do with it.

The three of them pant, catching their breath. There’s a long moment where everything feels incredibly fragile, hovering on a tipping point, and Steve’s chest tightens as he waits for the other shoe to drop. Bucky breaks the moment by snorting. “I have at least two people’s come on me,” he remarks blandly.

“Yuck,” Steve says.

“That’s one word for it,” Bucky replies, tipping his head back to give Steve a filthy grin, and what is Steve supposed to do with that but kiss him?

“I need a shower,” Sam says. “Supersoldiers cordially invited.”

“Woulda raced you to it if you hadn’t invited us,” Bucky says sweetly, breaking away from Steve.

Steve could never have guessed that the word ‘us’ would kick the legs right out from under him, but it does.

 

* * *

They shower in turns. Two grown men is a tight fit in any shower stall, let alone three, so Sam and Bucky go first and giggle at each other like children while they splash water in each other’s faces. At least, that’s what Steve assumes is happening, based on Bucky’s yelp and Sam’s cackle. 

Bucky sticks his wet head around the curtain, shampoo dripping down his cheek. “Hey, are you gonna go back to being Captain America?”

Steve blinks. He hasn’t thought about it. “I don’t know,” he answers.

Bucky shrugs. “No rush,” he says, and disappears back into the shower to rinse off. Sam and Steve trade places after a couple minutes, Sam mumbling something about Barnes and his hair, which makes Steve stifle a grin as he steps up behind Bucky and kisses his wet shoulder. Bucky sighs deeply. 

“I missed you,” Steve murmurs, the sound of it almost lost in the rush of the water.

Bucky is quiet for a long moment, then murmurs back, “You should give the shield to Sam.”

Steve’s hands tighten at Bucky’s waist. The thought had never even occurred to him. “...You think he’d take it?”

Bucky turns around, hair clinging to the curve of his throat, eyes bright and alive. “I think he’d be honored,” he says seriously.

Steve takes the soap. Thinks about Sam’s arm in the straps of the shield and feels a pang of longing so deep in him that it’s like drowning. When he washes himself, it feels like he’s been given new skin, a new body, new breath. And when he steps out of the shower and wraps a towel around his waist, finding Sam shaving in a fogged up mirror so he can stay near Steve and Bucky, he doesn’t fight the urge to spin him around and kiss him, shaving cream be damned.

For the first time since before the war, Steve feels clean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disordered eating is mentioned offhand in this chapter - it isn't delved into deeply at all, but I still like to warn for it :)
> 
> Just the epilogue to go! Turns out I needed one more chapter than I planned for, haha.


	8. Spinning in Infinity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha turns, eyes red-rimmed and wild. “Please tell me you aren’t messing up the space-time continuum to save my ass.”
> 
> Steve shrugs. “Anything worth fucking with is worth fucking with twice?”

**VORMIR**

 

* * *

 

“Wow. Time suits really are as stupid looking up close as they were from a distance,” Bucky says, looking down at his hands, which are hidden inside thick gloves. The glass of the helmet obscures his face, but Steve can see the nervous little crease between his brows, and he hopes he’s doing the right thing by bringing him and Sam along. 

He isn’t going to leave them behind again, though. Not ever.

“You always rock stupid, Barnes, don’t worry,” Sam says, clapping Bucky on the shoulder.

Steve shakes his head with a sigh, and they get to walking.

Vormir is an imposing planet. Fog everywhere, and the dark purple-grey rock feels breakable beneath Steve’s feet. They know where they’re going, thanks to Clint, but Steve thinks he could probably find the location even just by himself – the soul stone in his pocket grows warm as they tread toward the mountain spire, ready to be put where it belongs. Steve has decided that he hates time travel. 

But the mission they’re on is worth it, so Steve doesn’t complain.

They trek all the way around the base of the spire, where Steve looks up, shading his eyes with a hand. He thinks he’s timed this right, and he got Bruce to help him, but he’s afraid of fucking the timeline up more. Doesn’t know what he’ll do if he has to sew it all back together again.

Purple lightning crackles overhead and Steve flinches. Bucky and Sam do the same, which makes him feel better about being jumpy, and the three of them crowd close as they stare up at the imposing mountain of stone that bites upward into the sky.

“Any second now,” Steve says.

Sam grabs his hand and squeezes. Steve takes the soul stone out of his pocket and gives it to him, folding his hand around it – he’s glad to no longer be in charge of that tiny orange shard. Sam’s arm gives a little unnerved shiver as he takes the stone, not used to carrying something so electrically powerful, so horrible. He smiles tightly. Steve does his best to smile back.

“You know what to do,” Steve tells him. He receives a sharp nod in return.

“Steve,” Bucky says, urgent, and Steve’s head snaps up.

The two spies tangle down from the very top of the mountain, the call of their voices swallowed up by the shriek of the wind. Steve braces himself. His heart is doing awful, awful things in his chest, imagining what’s going to follow, and knowing what he has to do in return. He pushes these thoughts away as best he can – they can’t help him now, when he needs to focus. In the meantime, he watches Clint’s line get tangled, arm outstretched to clutch Natasha’s wrist. Steve braces himself. Keeps his knees soft.

Natasha falls, still reaching, and Steve thinks about Bucky’s arm stretching toward him as he fell from the train. He went back and saved that Bucky, but he couldn’t stop the fall. He can’t stop Natasha’s fall either, except –

She hurtles faster and faster toward the bottom, and Steve holds his arms out. He and Bruce figured out the exact last coordinates of her time suit, and that’s where Steve stands, feet planted, and when she’s about to hit the ground, she falls into his waiting arms instead. They go down heavy. It’s a long drop from the top of the spire to the bottom, and they fall to the ground with a clatter, Steve hitting the stone beneath him hard enough to knock the wind out of him with a surprised _oof!_ and a gasp. 

“Steve?” Natasha asks, bewildered.

“Hi,” Steve wheezes. He’s grinning uncontrollably. It’s so good to see her.

“What the fuck,” she exclaims, and struggles to her feet. “The soul stone, I have to –”

“It’s taken care of,” Bucky says. Her mouth falls open when she sees him. Bucky gives a little wave. “Hi.”

Natasha is standing on wobbly legs as she walks to him slowly, disbelievingly. Bucky glances at Steve, then back to Natasha, opening his arms. Natasha all but topples over into them.

“You guys are from the future,” she realizes, voice muffled by Bucky’s shoulder. “We won.”

“We did,” Steve agrees, rising to his own feet. He’s lucky Natasha is so compact, or he would’ve broken a rib otherwise. “But we lost you.”

She turns, eyes red-rimmed and wild. “Please tell me you aren’t messing up the space-time continuum to save my ass.”

Steve shrugs. “Anything worth fucking with is worth fucking with twice?”

Sam chokes on a laugh. “Jesus, Steve.”

Natasha whirls around when she hears him and nearly bowls Steve over in an effort to get to Sam, which Steve thinks is pretty sensible, all things considered. Sam hugs her tight, laughing, rubbing up and down her back. Her eyes are dry when she pulls back, but they look glassy. Steve doesn’t even think about mentioning her wet eyelashes.

“You’re here to take me back, then?” she asks, her crooked smile both desperate and hopeful.

“Here to take you home,” Steve answers, and what a word that is. Home. He’s made so many mistakes in his life, trying to go home; he’s felt like an intruder in every place he’s lived since his mother died and he moved in with Bucky. Now, though. With Sam and Bucky at his sides, in their rightful positions, watching each other’s backs. With Natasha alive and smiling, bright-eyed in front of him. Home doesn’t sound so far away at all, even standing on the stone ground of a foreign planet.

She shakes her head slightly, disbelieving. “Hope you brought some more Pym particles with you, Rogers.”

“Now, really.” Steve takes the red vial from his belt and clicks it into place on her suit. “What kind of master tactician would I be if I didn’t have an exit strategy?”

“Time for my part?” Sam asks.

Steve nods, sobering slightly. “One more thing to do before we leave.”

After a hushed conversation, Sam takes off, takes flight. He circles back around where they came, and Steve takes a moment to admire the arc of his spine as he flies, the ease with which Sam navigates the strange new atmosphere. He tries not to get ahead of himself. There will be time for all kinds of things later, once they’re all safe at home, and Steve can mouth the sweetest words he knows into the soft space between Sam’s shoulder blades.

Steve reaches over, taking Natasha’s hand. He doesn’t protest at all when she slides her arm around his waist instead, tucking herself up against his side.

 

* * *

 

Clint doesn’t watch Natasha fall. He looks away as soon as she lets go, squeezing his eyes closed, clinging to his own rope. He thinks about falling after her. He thinks about a lot of things, like how he got here, and if it’s possible for a guy to fuck up so bad that his bones melt. He’d deserve that, probably. 

He hits the button on his wrist guard and reels himself back up, where he hauls himself onto the dais that he and Natasha left behind. Where’s the soul stone, huh? He’s had what he loves most ripped from his hands, isn’t that supposed to be enough to get the damn thing?

But there’s a note on the ground, weighed down by a glowing orange rock that Clint can only assume is what he’s looking for, even if the tiny thing has no right to be of equal value to a human life. Especially Natasha’s.

“What the hell?” he mutters, picking up the note.

 _Maybe you were right about Budapest,_ the note reads. _And you might have been right about my ledger, too. Be kind to yourself about yours._

In the cold, stormy dark of Vormir, Clint allows himself to hope.

 

* * *

 

**EARTH**

_2024_

 

* * *

 

“Clint’s face is gonna be hilarious,” Sam says on the drive from Bucky’s apartment to the farm house. They haven’t warned him at all, because Steve thinks that they haven’t had nearly enough good surprises in the past couple years. He’s looking forward to seeing this one play out.

Steve snorts. “He’s gonna cry,” he says. “It’s gonna be really embarrassing.”

“Really, boys,” Natasha sighs. “You’re telling me none of you cried when everybody came back from the dead?”

“Nope,” Steve says cheerfully. “No tears whatsoever. Not a single manly sob.”

He watches in the rearview mirror as Bucky squints and holds up a thumb and forefinger pinched nearly all the way together in a universal _just a little_ motion. Sam laughs, forehead coming down to rest on Bucky’s shoulder.

Steve turns the radio up. He rolls the windows down, just to feel the air whip past his face, even if Bucky will inevitably complain about it messing up his hair. It’s summer, it’s warm, and the roar of the engine as Steve steps on the gas pedal to speed up fifteen miles above the limit makes him feel alive. It’s the kind of day that deserves whooping for joy just for the hell of it, so Steve does, the sound loud and victorious and completely absurd.

“What the fuck!” Bucky cries out. “Roll the windows back up, we’re on the freeway!”

“It’s called the freeway for a reason!” Steve cries back. “I can do what I want!”

And for once in his godforsaken life, Steve knows exactly what that is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is it! What a ride it's been - thank you for sticking with me through the longest fic I've written :)
> 
> As always, please feel free to come say hi anytime, and never hesitate to drop a line letting me know what you think <3

**Author's Note:**

> I'm transbucky on tumblr! Come say hi :)


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